My mom just shrugged.
I exploded. “But you run the place! It’s your diner! Why in the world wouldn’t a business owner ask the pie woman if she makes more pie?” I thumped on the arm of my Adirondack chair for emphasis, and my fork clattered to the porch floor.
She looked at me for a moment; my hand was still clenched in a fist. “Just how pissed are you?”
“Pretty pissed.” I sighed, setting my plate on the floor. So much for not letting it get under my skin. Evidently this was a splinter the size of a telephone pole. “I just — ugh.” I set my head down where my plate had been.
“Say it, Roxie,” she said.
“I’m here. And I’m going to hold down the fort while you’re gone. But like I said, I’m not bailing you out again.” I lifted my head to look up at her through tired eyes.
“I hardly think coming to help at your family’s diner is bailing out. Not when I have a chance to go on TV and try something really new and exciting,” she said.
I closed my eyes. I was feeling the effects of my drive, and not up to a fight right now.
“I agree that this time has a different feel to it. CBS programming isn’t usually the method you use to get me to come home, or fix something, or make a call, or literally bail you out when you flood the basement because you forget to turn off the hose. But I’m talking about in the future. When these things happen again? Not going to come running. I’ve got my own life to take care of. I have a career—or I’m trying to, anyway. We clear?”
She opened her mouth. Then closed it. Then opened it again.
“When will you be back?” I asked quietly.
“The main producer said I won’t be able to check in, something about a nondisclosure, but that in an emergency I’d be able to contact you or vice versa, so don’t think that—”
“When will you be back?” I repeated.
“It depends on how well I do, how well Aunt Cheryl does, if we’re able to stay in the game until the end, so—”
I used literally every ounce of patience available to me to calmly ask one more time, “When. Will you. Be back?”
“September. Hopefully by Labor Day.”
Three months. I’d be here the entire summer. Wow. Would I have totally morphed back into my high school self by the time she returned?
I sat up tall. I wasn’t that socially awkward girl anymore. I was a graduate of the American Culinary Institute. A private chef in Los Angeles. California Roxie, a chef so talented I once made a spotted dick so good that Jack Hamilton made a face I’m pretty sure only Grace Sheridan usually gets to see.
I took a deep breath, centered, and nodded. “Okay. The summer. That’s fine.”
“Really?” she asked, looking surprised and relieved.
I forced a smile. “I’m sure it will be just fine. And I’m exhausted, so I’m going to bed.”
I settled into my childhood bed, surrounded by everything important to me as a teenage girl. Instead of posters of Justin Timberlake and Edward Cullen, I had a shrine to Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain. Those two would make a heavenly sandwich for any woman to slip in between. If asked, I’d be their meat.
Instead of cheerleading pom-poms and pictures of the prom, I had framed menus from some of my favorite restaurants in New York City. The NoMad. WD-50. The Shake Shack. Pok Pok NY. Union Square Café. Of course Le Bernardin. See above-mentioned Ripert/Bourdain sammich.
While other girls in my high school were planning which sorority to rush next year in college and what dress to wear to prom, I was daydreaming about chanterelles and geoduck. Of the American Culinary Institute in beautiful, sunny Santa Barbara. A world away from my hometown.
And here I was, back in the house I’d grown up in. I pulled back the comforter, smiling when I smelled the homemade lavender laundry soap my mom made each summer, when the herb gardens in the backyard were thick with spicy scent.
She forgot to leave me a note on the door, but she made sure I had fresh sheets.
I slipped between them, turned off the light on my nightstand, and watched as the shadows became familiar. The glow from the old shed still shone through the back window, making the sequins dance in the blue ribbon I’d won in the pudding contest at the county fair. The dolls on the shelf above the desk were still lined up, their shapes changing a bit as the moonlight settled over them. Blue and silver, they waited to be pulled off the shelf again. I could hear the crickets, ending their first symphony of the evening, but knowing they’d only take a brief intermission before their till-dawn concert continued. I flipped and flopped in the twin bed, taking comfort and a bit of melancholy in the knowledge that nothing had changed.
The nights I spent in this room, fighting to fall asleep, fighting to relax and will myself to get a few hours in before the alarm went off—it felt exactly the same. And right on cue, that last train from Poughkeepsie heading down the Hudson sounded its lonely horn. On its way to Grand Central in the city, that sound marked the beginning of the loneliest part of the night. When I knew everyone else was asleep, and I couldn’t pretend anymore that I wasn’t the only person still awake.
I hated that sound.
I flopped one more time, feeling the edges of pure exhaustion begin to pull me under. I still couldn’t believe I was back here.
But only for the summer. And then I’d take Grace Sheridan up on her promise to introduce me to some better people to cook for.
And if I was lucky, I’d find some company in the meantime.
When I woke the next morning my mother was already gone, and I was immensely thankful not to be officially on the diner work schedule yet, since my brain remained on Pacific time. As I struggled to feel even remotely alert, the specter of high school Roxie emerged again—so I called in reinforcements. Literally.