The Love Goddess' Cooking School (11 page)

When the bell jangled again, Holly covered the minestrone soup she was attempting for the third time (too flavorless,
despite all the herbs, and too thin), and headed into the foyer, prepared, she realized, to chat about today’s pasta special and what was still fresh and available from the past few days. She smiled at the strikingly pretty woman with long, red hair and dark blue eyes and the most translucent skin Holly had ever seen. The woman had been in a few times when her grandmother was alive, and Holly had noticed her at the funeral.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m Francesca Bean. Tamara’s sister.”

Tamara’s sister? Holly studied her face, and yes, there was the same aquiline nose and the elfin chin, but otherwise they looked nothing alike. “Oh, yes, the bride to be,” Holly said. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks. In fact, my wedding is why I’m here. I’m getting married in six months, March twenty-first, the first day of spring, at the Blue Crab Cove Inn. And I’m in the process of arranging for a caterer. I was wondering if Camilla’s Cucinotta would like to prepare a tasting menu for my fiancé and me and our testers, aka our mothers who are footing the bill and insist on agreeing to the band, food, and photographer.”

Holly’s mouth dropped open and she quickly shut it, reminding herself that appearing stunned that anyone, let alone someone planning a wedding lavish enough to be held at the Blue Crab Cove, which was one of the ritziest bed-and-breakfasts in southern Maine and accounted for most of the summer tourists, was not how to score this job.

“I’m honored, Francesca,” Holly said. “But since I saw you at my grandmother’s funeral, I know you’re aware she’s passed on. I’m doing all the cooking for Camilla’s Cucinotta.”

“I know. My sister told me all about you and the class last
night. She said she had a blast and loved everything you all made.”

Thank you, Tamara.

“Your grandmother is the reason I’m marrying the guy of my dreams,” Francesca said. “I would have hired her to cater the wedding whether my mother or future mother-in-law approved or not, but now that she has passed, they raised a huge fuss at our wedding-agenda breakfast this morning when I said I’d like to give you a chance to cater. They insisted you prepare a tasting menu for their approval or they won’t pay, and to be honest, both my fiancé and I are in grad school and totally broke, so I kinda need to bow before them when it won’t kill me.”

“I totally understand,” Holly said. “And I’m really touched that you’re giving me this opportunity. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

“Well, I can’t tell you what your grandmother meant to me. To me and Jack.”

Holly smiled. “Your sister said my grandmother’s fortune brought you two together?”

Francesca’s face lit up. “Can you believe that one twenty-five-dollar fortune changed both our lives? I was deciding between two doctoral programs, one here at Bowdoin and one in California, and my mother was driving me nuts to choose Bowdoin, which made me want to choose California, and I had no idea what to do, so I went to Camilla.”

As Holly made a pot of Earl Grey tea and led Francesca over to the breakfast nook, Francesca told Holly the story of how
she’d sat in this very chair and listened to Camilla tell her to take her paints and her easel—and Francesca hadn’t even mentioned to Camilla that she painted—every day for one week by the pier, and that she would meet the man she would marry by that pier, paintbrush in hand. And that would help her choose her program, in Maine or California.

“And she was right,” Francesca said, sipping her tea. “The fourth day, I was backing up to check my painting from a distance and a very cute guy came up to look at the painting and he said it was a beautiful depiction of the Blue Crab Island bridge, and if the painting was for sale when I was done, he’d buy it in a heartbeat. While we were talking, I totally forgot about your grandmother’s prediction. I was so caught up in talking to him, about Blue Crab Island, about Maine, and he said something like, ‘Maine is a part of who you are, and it really shows in your work,’ and I realized I did want to do my program here in Maine, that I was only thinking of leaving to escape my overbearing mother. But cute Jack helped with that because I suddenly had a date every night of the week.”

Holly smiled. “That’s a great story.”

“I don’t know if your grandmother was right or if fate just works that way or what would have happened if I’d gone to California. I just know I met the man of my dreams and I’m marrying him in March. I’ll bet you’ve gotten some great advice from your grandmother.”

Holly smiled. She had gotten great advice her entire life from Camilla. But she hadn’t always listened.

“So you see why I have to give Camilla’s Cucinotta a
chance, even if Camilla herself won’t be doing the cooking? This is her place. I can feel her in here, I think.” She glanced over at Antonio lying in a spool of sunlight in his cat bed. “That cat was here when she told me to spend my lunch hours at the pier for one week. And that cat will be here when you create the tasting menu.”

“Are you saying you think Antonio has special powers?” Holly asked with a grin.

Francesca laughed. “No. Just that he belonged to the Love Goddess. And now he belongs to you. All this belongs to you. I assume you wouldn’t be here, making the pastas of the day and teaching the cooking class, if you weren’t serious about cooking.”

“I’m very serious about it,” Holly said. And she realized how true it was.

Over another cup of tea, Francesca told her about her and Jack’s first date, and the engagement party, which Camilla had gone to, giving them a beautiful box with their names carved on it, and then she got into the details about the how and when of the tasting. The mothers wanted the matter settled within two weeks, so Francesca named a date and time to meet in the drawing room at the Blue Crab Cove, because according to Jack’s mother, it was as important to ensure the food went with the décor and ambiance as it was for it to be delicious.

“About the menu,” Holly said. “What did you have in mind?”

“Since Jack comes from an Italian family, we all like the idea of celebrating the mix of our heritages. Maine meets Italy. Camilla’s lobster ravioli, which she made for our engagement
party, was amazing. Three courses. Oh, and each course should have a vegetarian option. You don’t need to worry about dessert, of course. The cake is being made in Portland, by my mother’s favorite bakery.”

“And you’d like a sampling of a few different items per course for the tasting?”

“Three of each would be perfect.”

Three of each. Nine dishes to make and perfect within two weeks. If she secured this job, she would be hired for other catering jobs. For the Blue Crab Cove. For parties, corporate and academic and private.

“Francesca, I’m just curious. Who is my competition?”

“You have two competitors. One is Portland Cooks and the other is Avery Windemere. Do you know her? She grew up on Blue Crab Island. She’s now offering cooking classes too. My parents are good friends with the Windemeres, so I have to offer her a trial run too, even though”—she leaned in—“she’s not my favorite person. Plus, Lenora Windemere is a good friend of my grandmother’s, and especially because there was some kind of bad blood between Lenora and your grandmother, I feel like I have to give Lenora’s granddaughter a chance.”

“Bad blood?” Nothing in the diary hinted at bad blood—yet, anyway. Though, as Camilla had written, despite the confessions and secrets she was privy to, she had not quite been welcomed into the group of four as a friend. “Like what?”

Francesca shook her head. “I don’t know. My grandmother isn’t much of a gossip, so she’s never said. And the one time I thought to ask my mother, who does love gossip, she said she
didn’t know either, just that it had something to do with Lenora Windemere’s youngest son, who died young.”

Died young? The baby she’d finally conceived?

“Apparently, Lenora tried to get your grandmother kicked off the island for a long time when they were in their twenties or thirties, but then Lenora just took to ignoring Camilla and stopped talking about her altogether. She tried to get her friends to stop going to Camilla for fortunes and classes, but they snuck over to see her anyway and soon enough Lenora accepted it.”

“I wonder what happened,” Holly said, her grandmother’s words in her diary coming back to her.
When she dropped the gnocchi into the water and added, Please Lord, let me get pregnant, I got a funny feeling. . . .

Francesca shrugged. “Whatever it was, it was something bad. When my grandmother mentioned to Lenora in passing a couple of months ago that I planned to hire Camilla to cater the wedding, she said that would be a big mistake, that Camilla might poison the food to spite her for being a family friend. Of course, everyone told her that was nonsense, and my grandmother reminded her it was because of Camilla that I was getting married and staying in Maine in the first place. My family loves Jack and his family. So Camilla has serious points with some of the Beans, if not the Windemeres. But I’ll tell you, my mother thinks the Windemeres walk on water, and she’d like to hire Avery to score suck-up points, so do the best cooking of you life for the tasting.”

But no pressure!
“I’ll spend the next week creating a tasting
menu to assure you and your family that they should choose Camilla’s Cucinotta to cater your wedding,” Holly said.

“I’m sure you will. I just have a good feeling. And you’ve got Tamara all jazzed about something other than dating. Though now she’s talking about how she can cook for her dates.”

Tamara, enthused about dating? Interesting. Maybe she talked about dating so much with her family to get them off her back, to assure them she was “working on it.” She had a feeling Tamara had long lived in Francesca’s shadow. Or maybe Tamara did want to meet someone, did want to get married like her sisters—and didn’t want to admit it, especially under all that pressure, perceived or otherwise.

“I owe Tamara too, since she found my gown for me. I must have looked at a hundred dresses and none of them was the one. And then Tamara said she saw the perfect Francesca dress in a small boutique in Portland’s Old Port, and she was right.”

“Did you have to get mother and future mother-in-law approval?” Holly asked, unable to imagine someone nixing a dress she loved and having to put it back.

Francesca laughed. “No way.” She whipped out her cell phone from her purse and flashed through five photos of herself in a beautiful, delicate wisp of a dress that suited her fragility.

“It’s stunning,” Holly said. “Tamara must know you well.”

Francesca looked thoughtful for a moment. “Better than I thought.”

Holly had tried on a wedding gown once, just six months ago, right before John had started changing, becoming more
distant. She’d passed a bridal boutique and had gone in and couldn’t help the big fat fibs that had come out of her mouth, that yes, she was a bride to be, thinking of a summer wedding, and could she try a few? She flipped through stunning gowns on the rack until she found the one she’d wear if John ever did propose, and when she tried it on, it was so fairy-tale perfect that she’d burst into tears. The proprietor had her tissue box handy, of course, and had said that was often how you
knew.
Holly supposed that was true. She’d cried when she’d realized John was pulling away from her in a way that was different from those times he’d needed a minor break. She’d
known.

She wondered if Jodie without an
e
was visiting bridal shops and trying on dress after dress and then dumping them on the floor with a disdainful, “That particular white doesn’t suit my coloring at all.” Which was mean of Holly, since she didn’t even know the woman. But Mia had been right about Jodie’s attitude when she’d come in about the class; she’d been disingenuous about wanting to do something with Mia and all about scoring points with Mia’s father by being able to tell him she tried. And those cracks about Juliet’s colors? Just plain obnoxious.

As she walked Francesca to the door, Holly was torn between wanting to find out what the “bad blood” was between her grandmother and Lenora Windemere and preparing for a very big job interview. She decided the Camilla–Lenora feud would just have to wait. She headed back into the kitchen and stood in the center of the room and felt as though the air was filled with tiny invisible bubbles of possibility. “I have
a chance to do something,” she said to Antonio. “Something meaningful. Something that would make my grandmother proud. Something that would make me proud.” She bent down to scoop up Antonio and scratched him under his white chin, the only spot of white on his gray coat. “Antonio, I want that catering job. If you are at all magic like my grandmother was, twitch your whiskers to help, okay?”

Antonio only twitched to get down. He didn’t love Holly and clearly missed his owner of sixteen years. She set him down in his little bed, then grabbed the recipe book and held it tight against her chest. Almost two weeks to prepare the menu, based on Camilla’s menus and recipes. Almost two weeks to perfect it. The money that a major job like this would bring in would pay that property tax, months of groceries, and allow Holly to offer a winter class and keep Camilla’s Cucinotta going.

She would secure that wedding. She had to. Even if she had to wish into every pot and pan for the next two weeks.

Seven

At a little before six, Holly scooped up the bag full of ingredients she’d collected from the refrigerator and pantry and headed across the street and down the oak-strewn unpaved path to Cove Road. She’d often biked down this road as a kid, the pretty cottages with their picket fences and porches so appealing. The Gellers’ cottage was the last one on the left, Mia had said, the bay opening up right behind it. It was getting dark now and Holly couldn’t see the water, but she could hear the seagulls and feel the bay breeze in her face, in her hair.

The house was fairy-tale wonderful, made of stone with a red wood door, the name
GELLER
in multicolored letters on the lobster-shaped mailbox. Two bikes were leaned against a stone carport, helmets dangling from the handlebars. Two beagles scampered up to greet her, their barks alerting Mia she was here. The red door opened and Mia beamed and raced out. “I’m so glad you came, Holly. I was so nervous you were going to bail on me.”