The Love Goddess' Cooking School (12 page)

If only I could,
she thought. “I brought an easy-to-make meal.
I thought we’d make chicken Milanese again so you can wow your dad with how much you learned and how easy and fast it is to make, and we can do a basic linguini primavera as a side. Plus a delicious loaf of Italian bread for bruschetta—that just means toasting the bread and topping it with fresh chopped tomatoes and olive oil.”

“Prima who?”

Holly smiled. “It means spring—and in this case, spring vegetables. And trust me, scrumptious.”

One eyebrow shot up in the air. “If you say so. Everything we made last night was incredible.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Holly said. Not Camilla incredible. Not four-star restaurant incredible, but incredible because they’d made it themselves. “So is your father here?”

“He’s not home from work yet. Come on in.”

Holly followed Mia up the three stone steps into a foyer with a wrought-iron coat rack, on which she hung her jacket. Through an archway they entered the large living room with its huge stone fireplace; brown leather sofa and love seat, both covered with colorful throw pillows; and oriental rug. There was an upright wood piano against one wall and a gallery of photographs of Mia in varying ages behind the love seat.

“Very nice,” Holly said, looking all around. And much cozier and “a family lives here” than another single father’s home had been, she thought, recalling how stark John Reardon’s house was.

“Give the bobblehead a day as official stepmonster and
everything will be pink and made out of plastic, trust me.” Mia led Holly down a short hallway into the kitchen, a good size, with old-fashioned appliances—a white stove and refrigerator and no dishwasher, as far as Holly could see. There was a beautiful wood table set below a bay window with three chairs.

“There used to be just
two
chairs at the table until Dad and Fakie got serious and she started coming over for dinner all the time. I hate looking at that third chair every day.”

Holly didn’t feel it was her place to respond to that in Liam Geller’s own house, so she set down the bag of ingredients on the counter and busied herself by putting away the perishables, unable to help noticing the to-do list scrawled in black ink and stuck to the refrigerator with a Downeast Energy magnet:
Put $10 for field trip in M’s backpack. Pick up dry cleaning. Oil change. Say thanks to the cooking teacher. Kibble.

Only
Say thanks to the cooking teacher
and
Put $10 in M’s backpack
for field trip had big check marks through them.

Holly smiled.

“My dad is totally anal,” Mia said. “I just learned that word in our psychology segment.”

Holly slid over a large wooden bowl and began placing her vegetables in it. “Everyone keeps to-do lists. You will too.”

“I keep mine up here,” Mia said, pointing to head. “Number one: Lose the soon-
not
-to-be stepmonster. Number two: Get Daniel to notice I exist on this earth. Number three: Find perfect dress to wear for the Fall Ball.”

“Are you going to ask Daniel to the dance?”

“No way. I’d be totally mortified if he said no. Especially if
anyone found out I asked him. And my one new friend already knows I like him. One person knowing is enough.”

“That’s great that you have a new friend,” Holly said. Friends were everything, especially when you were turning twelve. Holly remembered how much Juliet had meant to her, how much Juliet had helped her feel not only okay, but good about herself at that awkward age.

“Her name is Madeline Windemere,” Mia said. “Isn’t that the most gorgeous name? She’s thinking of letting me in her M Club, but so far, the other Ms have been kinda snotty about it. Like Morgan Leeson and Megan Grist. Madeline’s one of the most popular girls at school, so if she lets me in, I’m in.”

Huh. That didn’t sound good. Life on a tiny island. The Windemeres were everywhere.

“I met Madeline at a welcome party her mother threw for us when we moved here at the end of August,” Mia said. “Madeline said I had killer hair and a totally possible amazing body and that because my name started with
M
, I could be in her club, but only if the other Ms voted me in at the end of the month.”

Ugh. Holly remembered this crap from middle school. She supposed it would go on forever. And either Mia would be welcomed into the glittering girls’ society and find true friends there, which was possible, Holly knew, from watching the cliques Avery had as a tween and teen and in her own school in Massachusetts, or she’d be cast out and find her own group, her own people. Being “voted in” to a group of friends didn’t sound like the basis of a beautiful friendship.

She imagined Jodie coaching Mia into the M Club. Maybe
Jodie
did
have to go. “Mia, I just want you to remember one thing.
You
get to choose too. If you decide you don’t want to be an M, you get to decide that too.”

Mia looked at her like she had four heads, but before she could say anything, the sound of a car pulling up had her jumping down off the counter. “My plan is to ease into the topic. Not hit him all once with the fact that I saw him with the ring. He hates confrontations. You have to work up to a conversation with my dad.”

Holly had a desperate urge to run out the door and back up the path to Blue Crab Boulevard. What was she doing here, in the middle of this family drama that had nothing to do with her? How had she gotten here?

Mia took Holly’s hand and pulled her into the living room, where Liam, looking his usual rumpled, handsome self, was being welcome-mauled by the two beagles jumping at each of his knees. At the sight of Holly, he straightened.

“Dad, look who’s here to give me a home lesson in the basics of Kitchen 101 and Italian cooking? Isn’t that awesome? Holly is so amazing. We’re going to make dinner! It would be so cool if you could learn too, Dad. Holly is the best cook and can teach us to make all our favorites. I’m getting to do my own trial run of what we made last night—chicken Milanese.”

Holly’s eyebrow shot up. She hadn’t cleared this with her father? Holly didn’t love being manipulated, especially by a preteen. She’d have to make things clear with Mia later. And she was hardly the “best cook.” Lesson number one for Mia:
one exaggeration could topple your entire plan.

“That’s great,” he said, taking his messenger bag from where it was slung around his torso and hanging it around the coat rack. “But honey, I wished you’d let me know. I have plans for dinner tonight. Important plans that I can’t break.”

Mia’s lips tightened and she looked like she was trying to stop herself from crying. “You mean with
Jodie
?”

He glanced uneasily at Holly. “Yes, with Jodie.”

“What’s so important?” Mia asked through gritted teeth. “Why is
tonight
so important?”

Holly wanted to disappear. Liam glanced at her with an embarrassed
I’m sorry about this
expression, and then stared at his daughter. “Mia, we have a guest, so—”

“Yeah, we have a guest so let’s not talk about the fact that my father is going to propose tonight to a totally fake beauty pageant loser who hates me.” With that, Mia ran out the front door.

Liam rushed to the door, but Mia was out of sight. “Mia!” he called out.

Silence.

He came back in, leaning his head against the wall and sighing.

Holly put on her jacket. “Which direction do you think she went?”

“There are four places she likes to go when she’s upset. She could be at any of them.” He put his jacket back on and they went out, the dogs following them. “Stay in the yard,” he told them, and began walking around back, where Holly could see a stretch of inky water and a rowboat moored at a short wooden
dock. “I often find her in the rowboat,” he said as he headed around the house.

Was she supposed to follow? Go home?

She followed. “This must be tough on you, your daughter reacting this way to the news that you’re going to propose to your girlfriend.”

She realized she’d just done exactly what Mia wanted—a little late, though.

“News? I don’t know where she got the idea that I’m going to prop—” He stopped dead in his tracks and ran a hand through his dark hair. “Oh, man. She must have seen me holding her mother’s ring this morning and thought I’d bought one for Jodie.”

“Her mother’s ring?” Holly asked, not sure she should even be in this conversation.

“I was looking for a parking pass and couldn’t find it anywhere and thought I’d thrown it in the top drawer of my desk in my bedroom, where I throw everything I never use, and sitting right in there was my ex-wife’s diamond ring. She left it, and her wedding ring, on my pillow the morning she moved out, and I flung it in the drawer. I saw it in there this morning—for the first time since, and it just floored me, you know? A few years ago I had a very different life. I guess the ring reminded me.”

Lord, this was awkward. She barely knew this man and now she was privy to the breakup of his marriage
and
his escalating daughter drama.

“So you’re not proposing to your girlfriend?”

“No,” he said. She waited for him to add a
yet
or an
I don’t know
or a
we’ll see what the future brings,
but the
no
was all he seemed willing to say on that subject.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, kicking at rocks along the path up to Blue Crab Boulevard. “Things have been a little tense in the house lately. Mia thinks her mother is going to come ‘home’ for her birthday. Literally and figuratively. God, I hate these huge setups of disappointment. Her mother likes making these grand gestures that make it seem like she went through heaven and earth for someone. But she’ll come and she’ll go after the birthday cake. If she comes at all.”

“To be honest, Mia seems more wrapped up in the idea of you marrying Jodie than about her mother coming or not. It’s all she talks about.”

“Well, she’ll calm down when I explain about the ring.” As they stepped onto Blue Crab Boulevard, he said, “She likes that huge tree with the low climbing branches behind the library. She might be there.”

And so they went there next. The small library was on its own lot in the center of the mile-long main street. “Ever been married?” he asked, glancing at her as they walked up the brick walkway to the library and followed it around back.

“Me? No.”

“You’re lucky, then,” he said. “Still not cynical.”

“Oh, I’m plenty cynical.”

He smiled. “When I was standing there this morning, just staring at the ring, all I could think about was the night my wife left, saying that I talked her into a life she never wanted.
Including motherhood. Do you believe in that? Do you think you can talk someone into a life? Doesn’t the other person have to want it to say yes to it?”

Oddly enough, Luciana Maguire came to mind. When Holly asked her mother why she never wanted to visit Camilla, why she never wanted to stay for a few days when she’d drop off Holly, her mother would sometimes say, “I don’t want to live in your grandmother’s life. I had to growing up, but I don’t now.” When pressed for whys, her mother would say she didn’t want to talk about it. Luciana would sometimes mutter that kids didn’t have much choice, then add that was why she didn’t keep Holly from visiting as much as she wanted to—so as not to force or project her own negative feelings about Camilla or the island onto Holly. Her mother was complicated. Holly didn’t think she’d ever understand her.

But as much as Mia would want Holly to shift the focus to forcing a
kid
into a certain life, with a certain stepmother, say, Liam wasn’t talking kids right then. This was about adults. Relationships. Love. And lack thereof.

“On some level, yes,” she said. “I would think. But if the other person is persuasive and you don’t know what you really want and the life being offered sounds appealing, maybe on paper, I guess you could say yes and not be sure.”

It had been her idea to move to California after three months of a long-distance relationship that Holly had been so sure of. And John had finally said, “Sure, why not, but of course we can’t live together because I have Lizzie every other weekend,” and so she’d moved into the attic apartment with a roommate
who was rarely there until she was suddenly always there with the boyfriend who ended up squeezing Holly out. Maybe she’d talked John into a life and he’d halfheartedly said yes. She had no idea how any of that worked.

“What about right now?” Liam asked, as though he’d read her mind. “Do you feel like you got talked into the life you’re living right now?”

“Literally right now, yes,” she said, smiling. “Your daughter engineered this whole thing, hoping I could back her up somehow. I’m sorry I got involved. I mean, in your personal business.”

“Don’t be. She clearly trusts you and she doesn’t have a lot of female role models. She hates all but one of her teachers, and the one friend she’s made seems a little snotty. I thought Jodie might be a good influence on her, but as you heard Mia say, she hates Jodie.”

Holly offered a small smile, unsure what to say.

“You took over your grandmother’s business,” he said suddenly as they walked along the cobblestone path behind the library. “Did you want to?”

“I think deep down, yes. I was kind of between lives at the moment and suddenly one presented itself. A meaningful one. I spent summers here with my grandmother when I was growing up. She meant the world to me.”

He glanced at her. “Then it sounds like you’re where you belong.”

They checked the big tree and the few ornate benches in the backyard, but Mia was nowhere to be seen.

“Where next?” Holly asked.

“Down toward the far end of the island there’s a little gazebo at the start of the nature conservancy. She likes to take her iPod and books there to read sometimes. It’s a bit of a walk but she might have run there.”

As they crossed Blue Crab Boulevard, Holly could just make out the Blue Crab Cove Inn way off in the distance, along the rocky edge of the island. They headed toward the woods, about a quarter mile away. “So why did you think Jodie would be a good influence on Mia?” Holly asked, hoping she wasn’t overstepping despite how much he’d told her already.