And it also just so happens to be owned by my brother.
My grandfather opened it in the sixties, passed it on to my father, and then, when my parents died in the car accident when my mom was pregnant with me, he took over running operations again—along with raising his grandchildren.
We spent so much time here when I was a kid, I often wonder if that’s what made my brother the passionate chef he is today. When my grandfather died, it only made sense for him to leave Coastal Crepes to my brother rather than to me.
In fact, I’m pretty sure it would be about out of business if it were up to me. I’ve almost lost my design firm, and I actually know stuff about design. The only thing I know about the food business is how to eat.
The wrought-iron-and-glass door is heavy as I swing it open onto the stone sidewalk and duck inside. Dark compared to outside but lighter than much of the masculine design in the French Quarter, the restaurant settles my soul with everything familiar.
Years of coming here—years of growing up in the seats of the wooden benches of each booth.
It’s Saturday night family dinner and the restaurant is closed, so the only people inside are the ones I’m expecting to find—my brother, Heath, his son, Brooks, and his wife, Rhonda.
Rhonda is everything I’ve never wanted in a sister-in-law and then some, but for some reason, my brother loves her. She hardly ever speaks, shows little-to-no emotion other than hatred, and wears turtlenecks even in the summer.
They married a year and a half after he divorced Brooks’s mom, back when Brooks was ten, and I’ve been forced to live in close proximity to a cyborg ever since.
I’m half convinced she’s got a pussy made of liquid gold or something—a real church lady in the streets, freak in the sheets kind of thing—but I’m determined not to ever find out.
I’m not qualified in that kind of field research, and I don’t want to be. From what I hear, it takes three-to-six months of training and a huge investment in elbow-length gloves.
“Hello, hello,” I call as I sidle up to the table—the side with my brother and nephew—and try to shove in next to them.
Heath is amused by my antics—mostly because he doesn’t know that they’re rooted in blistering, hex-casting hate for his wife—and chuckles. “Plenty of room on the other side, Greer. Maybe you should take a seat over there.”
Automatically, Rhonda’s laser eyes engage, threatening to shoot me where I stand if I dare try. For as much as I can’t stand her, I think she dislikes me more.
I entertain everyone by making my own happy medium—a spare chair pulled up to the end of the table.
Spaghetti Bolognese sits front and center, and a dish with pickles hangs out on the side just for me.
I rub my hands together in glee and reach out to get it.
Heath slaps my hand playfully and gives me a huge smile.
“Why don’t we start with giving thanks?” he suggests like the daddiest-dad there ever was.
He is sunshine where I am rain, spirituality where I am… I don’t know what I am.
I mean, I’m not agnostic, but if you compared my dedication to faith in a bar graph with my brother’s, my column would be pretty much nonexistent.
“Start with getting me more pickles. The little hoodlum in the kitchen shortchanged me again.”
“First of all, the hoodlum is your nephew.”
I shrug.
“And secondly, he gave you three pickles.”
“Which isn’t nearly enough, and if he really loved his aunt at all, he would know,” I argue sagely, giving Brooks the side-eye dramatically. The overconfident teen-man doesn’t even look up from his fucking phone. Not that he ever does. I don’t think I’ve heard more than twenty words from my nephew since he turned fifteen and got an iPhone.
“We’re eating pasta,” Heath points out. “Not deli sandwiches.”
“And?”
Heath rolls his eyes but jumps up from the table nonetheless. Crippled by his innate desire to be helpful, especially when it comes to the little sister he practically raised, he can’t resist my request even if I am being a pain in the ass.
I know the pickle thing is weird, but if I’m honest, I have no intent to change. On the sliding scale of drugs, cucumbers soaked in juice are hardly equivalent to meth.
After setting the pickles down on the table in front of me, Heath lifts a leg over the back of his chair and climbs into it—the kind of thing only people over six feet can do—and dives right into his prayer.
Apparently, any delay is just another opportunity for me to mess it up.
I glance up a few times to make sure Rhonda doesn’t spontaneously combust from the prayer—kind of like what happens when you splash holy water on a demon—but for the most part, I listen dutifully.