Mom released her hand to take a bite of strawberry. “Talk to me about how things are going with your publisher, the women’s conferences you’ve headlined recently, your friends, your dating life.”
Oy.
“Also, have you been eating enough?” Mom pushed the egg platter closer to her. “Sleeping enough?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Are you managing your loneliness?”
Because Genevieve was single, Mom constantly projected loneliness onto her. “Singleness doesn’t equal loneliness,” she said lightly.
Mom took a sip of coffee. “I want to know everything.”
Had any of Sam’s employees ever had the nerve to arrive at his restaurant before he did, he’d have taken it personally.
So far, none had.
The morning after Genevieve Woodward had interrupted his life like an unwelcome news bulletin in the middle of regularly scheduled programming, Sam approached Sugar Maple Kitchen’s front door, keys in hand.
At five in the morning, downtown Misty River was still mostly asleep beneath a comforter of darkness. Only Merrie at the Doughnut Hut down the street clocked in before he did.
In the light of a streetlamp, Sam scanned the sidewalk in front of his restaurant for rubbish. None. With the help of a designer, he’d chosen dark gray paint for Sugar Maple Kitchen’s historic wooden exterior. The gray words stenciled across the two large windows on either side of the front door read Coffee—Baked Goods—Breakfast.
He neared the yellow mums and pale green potato vines he’d planted in tall pots. “How you doing there, lovely?” He tapped a flower, then rubbed one of the vine’s leaves between two fingers. “Good on ya, then.” He moved to the next pot. “Looking beautiful,” he murmured. “Excellent. Everything’s fine. It’s going to be a hot one today, but nothing to worry about. I’ll be back with water later. You’re doing well, all of you. Very well indeed. You’ve made me proud.”
He let himself inside, disabled the security system, and switched on lights.
The Kitchen had once been a pub called The Crow’s Nest, built in 1868. The eighteen foot long bar was the only original item that remained. The wall behind it that had once housed liquor bottles now housed coffee mugs, teacups, small plates, glasses of all sizes, a coffee grinder, and an espresso machine.
He slid behind the bar and began making himself a cup of espresso. The familiar movements of grinding the coffee beans into the portafilter, applying pressure with the tamper, and locking the portafilter into the espresso machine centered him.
He began every workday this way. For that matter, he executed every day of every week by following the same routine. The Kitchen opened for breakfast at seven o’clock and closed at one o’clock, six days out of seven.
Yesterday, Monday, had been his day off. Genevieve had gotten it off to such a bad start that he’d been on edge for the rest of the day. It had been difficult to relax and even more difficult to get Genevieve out of his head. In part because she stirred up painful memories of Kayden; in part because Genevieve herself wasn’t an easy person to forget. Like a frustrating itch, thoughts of her wouldn’t go away.
He intended to follow his usual schedule to a T today in an effort to recover his balance. Wake at 4:10. Put in his hours at The Kitchen. Hit the gym. Arrive home around two-thirty to work on the farm. Stay so busy that sorrow wouldn’t have a chance to swallow him. Avoid questioning what the point of his life was. Convince himself that he could stand to pass all the rest of his days this exact same way.
The first sip of coffee was always the best sip. He took his time tasting his espresso, smelling its rich scent, observing the quiet interior of his restaurant. The espresso was excellent. Everything inside The Kitchen was in order. And still, sadness swept up from the floor and curled around his legs, trying to drag him down. Angrily, he pushed it away and carried his cup to the small office in the back of house. As was his custom, he checked email while he slowly finished his coffee.
A knock sounded on the restaurant’s back door right on time, and he admitted his three sous chefs so they could begin the complicated dance of baking pastries and prepping components for the dishes customers ordered off the menu.
Sam was both The Kitchen’s owner and head chef. He’d painstakingly created the menu himself and still worked beside his sous chefs in the hours before the restaurant opened for business. After they opened, he’d spend most of his time either expediting orders or working in his office.
Thirty minutes later, he kneaded paleo cinnamon roll dough, the feel of it smooth beneath his hands.
Thirty minutes after that, he answered Mrs. Samuelson’s knock on the restaurant’s front door. She insisted on buying a coffee from him every morning at six-thirty, prior to opening. She always thanked him before placing $1.75 on the bar. Coffee cost $2.50. A fact he never mentioned to her.
Fifteen minutes after that, the waitstaff and baristas arrived.
Star, with the dyed black hair and tattoos on her neck, stopped before him, waiting until she gained his attention. “How was your day off?” she asked.
I had to deal with a long-haired addict who was sleeping in my guesthouse on a pile of her own clothes. “Pretty good, thanks. Yours?”
As she answered, she regarded him with the sort of frank admiration that communicated romantic interest.
He didn’t reciprocate.
He helped behind the bar with the coffee rush. The espresso, the emails he’d answered, the food prep, Mrs. Samuelson, even Star’s infatuation. The morning went exactly as expected.
His world had narrowed to include only two things. Sugar Maple Kitchen and his farm.
It was considerably less traumatic to wake to her alarm clock than to a stranger who riffled through women’s purses.
Regardless, anxiety jumped on Genevieve like a sharp-clawed cat the morning after her homecoming. She’d taken the last Oxy she’d ever take last night. Today she’d start to get clean. Which was absolutely the right thing to do.
Anxiety over what was to come wouldn’t help a thing. Anxiety was a wasted emotion!
Yet, stubbornly, dismay pooled in her stomach.
She sat up, hair falling heavily over her shoulders. Her attention fixed on the charming painting opposite her equally charming bed in the room her mom had decorated and redecorated for her over the years.
After the soul-purging with Mom yesterday morning, she’d spent the rest of the day trying to make penance by cleaning the already spotless house, running to the grocery store to secretly stock up on the fluids and foods that would help her survive detox, bringing her mom flowers, and making dinner for the three of them.
The prospect of staying here during withdrawal was appealing because this house was the lap of luxury and because her mom would make an extremely attentive nurse. The downside: Mom would be so attentive that she’d insist on taking Genevieve to the doctor or ER when Genevieve claimed flu, at which time a doctor would tell her mother that her beloved younger daughter was suffering from opioid withdrawal.
Her only other option was to race back to Nashville and fight through withdrawal in her apartment—just like she’d done the last time when her attempt at detox had crashed and burned.
She made her way to the adjoining bathroom (charming), piled her hair on top of her head, and stepped into the shower once it grew agreeably steamy. She scrubbed juniper body wash against her limbs. Perhaps she’d find God in the physical misery that was coming for her—