It’s weird, becoming an employee again, but it also feels like something I can manage. Making lattes. Clearing tables. A J-O-B, they call it in recovery lingo. I scribble my name on the form and pass it back.
“I’m sorry about your dad,” she says.
“Thanks.”
“He was quite a character. So charming and good looking.”
“Yep.” I wonder if I should seem more distressed, but I can’t start with lies. “We weren’t actually that close the past decade or so, honestly.”
“I get it. I worked at Peaches and Pork for a while in high school.”
I give a half laugh. “Yeah, me too.”
She smiles. “Well, we’re not quite the operation it is, but we’re proud of what we’ve built here. The café is on the main level, which is where you’ll be working, as a barista. This is the roasting area, obviously.”
Eyeing the bags, I ask, “Do you sell a lot of your own beans?”
“We do. It’s our main source of income, actually. We use the coffee in the café, but we also sell it in bags, half pound, one pound, more by special order. Several restaurants in the area have standing orders for their own roasts.”
“Really.” It’s a comment more than a question. And even though that snide part of my brain wants to dismiss the artisanal part of it—Rory’s set are all hipsters—I’m intrigued. “Like wine, in a way.”
“Exactly what my husband says. Maybe you’d be good at it, with your history. It’s really fascinating, honestly.”
I appreciate her not avoiding the elephant in the room. “Interesting.”
She stands. “Let me show you around. Have you ever been a barista?”
“Nope.”
“C’mon. I could do with a good espresso.”
Chapter Ten
Norah
I recognize Maya the minute she comes into the café. She moves like her dad, with the same long, loose limbs, and her face is a feminine version of his, the heavy brows and wide mouth, and the same sprinkle of freckles over her nose. It sends a little stab through my heart, and I can’t help staring. She sees me looking at her and gives a quick smile.
It makes me feel guilty.
Long before anyone in the house was stirring, I slipped out with my backpack and washed in the outdoor shower, hidden from the windows behind a wall of shrubbery. I dried off with a towel I’d taken from the linen cupboard, and squeezed my hair, shivering in the gloomy morning. For the moment, I have plenty of clean clothes, but I’ll eventually have to figure out how to do my laundry.
Not today. I tucked the towel away on a branch behind the guesthouse to dry and headed down the hill toward town, feeling absurdly good. I’d forgotten how great the payoff could be in the survival stakes. Not that I want to stay in this difficult space, but I take pride in my ability to be adaptable no matter what. I can eat for days on five dollars, get shiny clean in a gas station restroom, hustle a job from almost anyone, anywhere.
I spent most of the morning at the local library, doing research in the local newspapers from the seventies and eighties and nineties, trying to trace the story of Peaches and Pork and whatever other news I could discover about Augustus, or Meadow, or both. It gives me something to do besides freak out over my precarious situation. And maybe I’ll find a story in the whole thing.
One thing I found was their wedding announcement.
LOCAL LUMINARIES WED
Local restaurateur Augustus Beauvais wed organic farmer Meadow Truelove in a ceremony on a moonlit beach last Saturday. In attendance were the daughters of each, Rory Truelove and Maya Beauvais, with Jared Humphrey officiating.
The bride and her attendants wore simple white lace accented with red velvet, and bare feet, with headdresses of white dahlias and red roses. The groom’s suit was hand-tailored by Georges Durant, Montecito.
The couple met at the farm, discovered kismet, and joined forces in celebrating the growing farm-to-table movement in Central California.
Neither couple has living parents or grandparents, but they were held in love by their restaurant and farm families. They will reside in Santa Barbara in the famed Belle l’été house, built in 1922 by director Simon Greenfield and occupied by him until his death in 1990.
One color photo showed them kissing against a setting sun, Augustus so much taller, his stance so possessive that I felt an unexpected surge of jealousy. She’s dipping slightly backward, trusting in his embrace, her left arm falling toward the earth, her hand holding her bouquet, as if she’s been chased and captured somewhat unwillingly. Augustus pulls her pelvis into him, bending forward to kiss her. So hungry.