Briefly, I wish we could be friends. We’re close in age. We have some things in common, the food business, me writing, her doing. And she must have loved Augustus on some level, even if she hadn’t spoken to him in eight years.
Which is exactly why we will never be able to be friends. I sling my pack over my shoulder, glancing back just once to see she’s absorbed in making a coffee.
Onward.
Chapter Eleven
Meadow
After Maya drives away, I let myself into Peaches and Pork. The manager, Kara, is going to meet me here so that we can go over what the next steps should be, both for handling employees and for the near future of the restaurant. Technically, all but my 10 percent of the restaurant belonged to Augustus, but practically, I’ve participated at least peripherally forever, even after the divorce.
It’s hard to let go when you’ve been married a long time. It felt as if we had to find every single one of the threads that connected us and snip each one individually. A long and trying process. Some of the threads were more like steel cables that couldn’t be severed.
Like the restaurant into which we’d poured so much of ourselves, and my first book, which is not only a history of the foodie world in the area and Peaches and Pork, but our love story. And of course we couldn’t divorce the girls. He could no more stop being Rory’s father than I could stop being Maya’s mother.
The restaurant is cold inside, the chairs upturned on the tables so the staff could sweep and vacuum after the last service. The bar is tidy, with only a few glasses on the drainboard, the evidence of after-work drinks. A red wineglass, a highball, a pint glass. I look in the bar fridge and see that the beers have been stocked. Containers of limes and cherries and other bar standards stand at the ready. They’ll be slimy by the time service starts again, but that’s not my concern.
It’s luxurious to be here by myself. I always like a restaurant after hours, seeing the bones of the place, moving freely, and this one is deeply familiar. I wander through the bar, adjusting a couple of bottles—Jim Beam and Johnnie Walker Red—then move into the kitchen.
I’m not prepared for the mess. No one has been here; the restaurant has been closed since his death. Unlike the dining room, the kitchen is strewn with paper and muddy footprints, everything out of order. Most of it is the detritus of a lifesaving operation, discarded medical supplies, the rolling pass-out bar shoved out of the way. A plastic container that must have been sitting on the counter has been knocked over by the walk-in, shriveled carrots spilling out on the floor. An enormous skillet is upended nearby, and piles of bar towels, some stained, some not, are scattered everywhere. I don’t know whether I should enter to pick things up.
Probably not.
I creep closer, frowning. For a heart attack, there is a lot of mess. Discomfort swirls in my belly, and I move a little closer, trying to see if there’s evidence of anything. Muddy footprints smear the white tiles, and there’s a touch of blood on the floor, too, but not much. Maybe he hit his head on the way down.
Otherwise, I don’t see anything out of the ordinary. The stainless-steel counters are clean. The kitchen, like the front of the house, had been put to bed.
I wander into the office. It appears to be undisturbed. The surface of the desk is cluttered with papers, but most of the rest is fairly tidy—notebooks lined up next to the computer where he kept his notes, pens and pencils in empty jars, olives, peppers, capers, all normal size, not restaurant-huge. This single detail knocks the wind from my lungs and I sink into his chair, close my eyes.
Augustus.
All at once I smell him, that particular scent of coriander and promise. A sense of pressure weighs against my body, as if he’s sitting on top of me. For a space of seconds, I’m frozen, feeling as if I’m suspended within the essence of the man himself. I want to hang there, breathing him in, but the pressure grows heavier and heavier, and I open my eyes with a gasp.
Nothing, of course.
How can he be gone?
An envelope catches my eye. Maya Beauvais, it reads in his curiously beautiful handwriting. I pick it up and there’s heft to it. Was he writing to her at rehab? Setting her up for success when she reentered the world? I shuffle around on the desk, looking for another letter for Rory, but there isn’t one. It gives me a pang to imagine how she will feel when she realizes he’s slighted her. To protect her, I pick up the letter to Maya and tuck it in my bag. I’ll give it to her privately.
“Hello!” a voice calls from the other room. I stand up to greet Kara. She’s a square, solid person with shorn black hair that’s bleached out on top and combed into short spikes. Her brown arms are covered with full tattoo sleeves illustrating the history of her life. “How you doing?” she asks.