Kitchen Boss

Anything to keep that smile on her face.

“What do you want to play next?”

~

“It sounds like the two of you had a lot of fun,” Jackson says as he takes the pork out of the oven.

The aroma of herbs and perfectly cooked meat escapes into the kitchen and makes my mouth water.

As soon as he arrived home, Maisie fired away like a loose cannon and bombarded him with her report of the day’s activities while showing him the photos we took. That must have used up the last store of her energy, because when she was done, she fell asleep. It was up to me to give Jackson the rest of the details as he cooked dinner, which I’ve just finished doing. I’ve told him just about everything, except for the conversation Maisie and I had about Trisha and the fact that she almost choked on a grape during lunch, both of which I find unnecessary to disclose.

“We did,” I tell him after swallowing. “It’s mostly thanks to your daughter, though. She’s up for anything, and her smiles and laughter are just contagious.”

“That they are,” Jackson agrees.

I lean on the counter. “You’ve done a good job raising her.”

“Have I?” He stirs the gravy in a saucepan. “She’s barely five. I don’t think she’s raised yet. Besides, I haven’t done anything. She’s mostly been in the care of nannies and daycare personnel.”

I frown at the way he’s putting himself down.

“But you do your best to spend time with her,” I point out. “You give her everything she needs. You tuck her into bed.”

He lifts a spoon to his lips. “Some people think that’s not enough.”

I hoist myself onto a stool. “Well, screw them. You know, I’ve learned these past few years that people like to play God. They’ll wonder about you, they’ll come up with their own theories and pronounce their judgments, which usually end the same – you’re not good enough. But who cares? They don’t know what you’re going through. They’ll never understand, so their judgment isn’t good enough either.”

Jackson looks at me. “You’ve grown wiser.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I shrug. “Some people grow up to be more buff and some grow up to be wiser.”

His eyes narrow. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No. I’m just stating a fact. I mean, you are more buff.”

I gesture at his arms and he glances at them, too.

Heck, that’s an understatement.

“You mean I am buff, period,” Jackson corrects me.

I chuckle. “Yeah. That’s what I meant.”

He grins.

“You know, I am curious,” I tell him. “About how you… ended up this way. Is there a story there, or was it just some kind of growth spurt, like second puberty?”

“Second puberty?” He laughs, then turns serious. “Actually, I took something.”

My eyebrows arch. I wasn’t expecting that. “What?”

“Some kind of new serum, something like the one Captain America took.”

Well, that explains the heroic transformation from puny to killer booty. But wait. Is he serious?

Suddenly, he grins. “I’m just messing with you. Of course there’s no such thing.”

I frown. Now he’s making fun of me.

“There is a story, though. Want to hear it? This pork still needs some time to rest.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“It actually goes hand in hand with my journey to become a chef,” Jackson says. “And it started after… well, shortly after the last time I saw you.”

He means after Trisha died.

“My mom got sick and didn’t have anyone to take care of her, so I did. I dropped out of college.”

That explains why he’s not in front of a computer in an office or in a laboratory in Switzerland trying to figure out how to make the world a better place on a molecular level. I always thought he’d end up as one of those two.

“While doing that, I worked part-time, and I learned how to cook. I think I started gaining weight around then. Then she died and I was all alone, so I buried my sorrows in food.”

I frown as I feel a pang of pity. At least I had my mother and Hal to help me deal with grief. Jackson didn’t really have anyone.

“As you know, when you eat a lot, you put on a lot of pounds. I wasn’t just eating, though. I was trying out different kinds of food. I was doing research on food, making my own experiments. You know, cooking is a science. It requires precision and a lot of adjustments to achieve perfection.”

So he applied his love and knowledge of science to food.

“I don’t doubt that.”

“Do you know I never went to cooking school?” Jackson asks me.

I shake my head. “No.”

I just assumed he had.

“I’m mostly self-taught. Anyway, one day while I was at a restaurant, trying to study the dishes I’d been served and trying to pair different flavors, a retired chef approached me. He became my mentor, you know, taught me all the details, the finer stuff. I was a cook. He made me a chef.”