Hello, Sunshine

She was also, as I thought only two other people in the world knew, the recipe’s actual creator. Two to 2.7 million in the blink of an eye. I had to fight to keep my balance.

“I’m trying to get Twitter on the phone!”

I turned in my chair as Violet, my assistant, walked into the apartment, carrying two Starbucks coffees, her cell phone glued to her ear.

“Fucking West Coast hours,” she said. “I’ve been on hold forever. Is Ryan here yet?”

“Do you see him?” I said.

Violet handed me a coffee, plopping down onto the sofa, unfazed by the harsh tone. She was twenty-four, five foot eleven, with wild red hair, a gorgeous smile, and a detailed plan to build her own empire (Once Upon a Vegan) by the time she was twenty-eight. She loved to say that when she did, she would be a lot rougher on her Violet than I was.

“Ryan called from the car. He’s sending out Meredith’s statement,” she said. “She had nothing to do with your signature tomato pie or any of your recipes . . . Sunshine has been hacked, yada, yada . . .”

“Who do you think wrote it?”

She stood up. “Hello?” she said into the phone. She paused. “Who are you?”

She started pacing the length of the loft—the open kitchen to the living room—floor-to-ceiling steel windows lining her way. Danny had designed the apartment around those steel windows, their clean lines framing the brick building across the street, an eighteenth-century tea distributor, the etched white LAPPIN TEA on the front still announcing itself.

“No! I need Craig . . .” she said, screaming at the person on the phone.

I turned back to my computer, read the most recent replies to the Meredith Landy tweet.

@sunshinecooks Is this true? #Whatthefuck

@sunshinecooks Thought u were too skinny. #realchefseat

@sunshinecooks Dear Sunshine, you’re a monster.

The monster bit felt like a serious overreaction, and for the first time, I was glad to be locked out of my system so I didn’t say something to @kittymom99 that I later regretted. I closed the Twitter window and went back to crafting responses for the rest of my social media avatars. I had a staffer who ran each of these. But I was not about to trust a twenty-five-year-old Holyoke grad to deliver a message to my 1.5 million Facebook friends.

“They’re shutting it down!” Violet yelled out. “Craig is shutting it down!”

I looked up to see Violet doing the moonwalk over the Persian rug, dancing her way past the windows—as Ryan walked in the front door, arriving, as he always did, just in time to take credit.

“They’re shutting it down,” he said, like Violet hadn’t just

reported as much.

Ryan Landy. Columbia Law and Business School, newly forty, and chiseled everywhere: jaw, chin, shoulders. He was in his uniform of jeans and a sports coat, his shirt one-button-too-open. Since turning forty, he had adopted the forced-casual addition of hipster sneakers, which added to his perfect mix of little-boy good-looking, sleazy, and something (charming, deceitful) that made pretty much every woman he’d encountered putty in his hands—including his wife, Meredith, who seemed unable to do anything except forgive him for those other women.

Violet, still on the phone, put her hand over the receiver. “I’ve got Craig,” she said. “Should be down in thirty seconds.”

“Should’ve been down THIRTY SECONDS AGO, Craig,” Ryan said, loud enough for Craig to hear.

Violet plugged her ears. “What was that, Craig?” she said, scurrying away.

Ryan headed toward my egg chair, twirled me around, and offered his half-smile. Charming.

“Are you hungry?” he said.

“Am I hungry? Ah . . . no.”

He headed toward the kitchen. “Well, you better have something to eat in this place . . . ’Cause I’m starving,” he said.

Ryan reached into my refrigerator and pulled out a green juice, a hard-boiled egg. Then he jumped up onto the countertop, taking a seat. My gorgeous gray slate countertop: stunning beside the glass refrigerator, the eight-burner stove, and stainless steel ovens.

It was a chef’s kitchen in every way, even if I was a true chef in none.