Kitchen Boss

She’s not going to cry, is she?

“It’s not your fault Evelyn died,” Cathy tells me as she looks into my eyes. “It was no one’s fault, but it was her choice.”

“I know.” I look away. “But I still can’t help but think maybe she made that choice because of me. Maybe she wanted to have a baby so badly because I made her feel so alone, because I’d let our marriage fall apart.”

“Don’t think that.” Cathy places her hand on my cheek and turns my face to hers. “Whatever Evelyn’s reasons, it was her choice. And you supported her. I know that must have been very hard for you, but things were a hundred times harder for her. She had the toughest choice to make of all – choosing between being with the man she loved and saving the child she might never get to see grow up. She needed your support, and you gave it to her. You tried to make her happy. I’m sure she had no regrets in the end. She wouldn’t want you to have any, either.”

I say nothing as I gaze into Cathy’s eyes. I thought she was on the brink of tears because she felt sad about what happened to Evelyn, but now I realize those tears are for me. My throat tightens.

“You deserve to be happy, Jackson. Evelyn would want you to be.”

As she gives me a soft smile, the fog of sadness in her eyes thins. It’s still there, but I can also see other things now – hope, concern and something that sends warmth flooding into my chest.

I said she had a hard shell around her heart, but I had one, too, and now it seems like that shell is melting away.

I place my hand over hers. I suddenly have an urge to plant a kiss in her palm, to place my own hand on her cheek and bring her face close to mine.

I want to taste more of that warmth Cathy’s offering, the warmth that’s made me feel alive again.

The ringing of my phone shatters the moment. Cathy’s hand slips away, her eyes breaking contact with mine. I mutter a curse as I get my phone out of my pocket. I feel like saying another when I see Betty’s name on the screen.

“I should go,” Cathy mumbles as she gets off her stool. “I have to get some rest or I won’t survive Ken’s workout tomorrow.”

I nod. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

I watch Cathy walk out of the kitchen, my heart heavy. Somehow, I can’t help feeling like I’ve just missed out on an incredible opportunity.

After she leaves, I let out a sigh and hold my phone to my ear. “What is it, Betty?”

This better be good, though I already have a feeling it isn’t.

“Must you really sound so annoyed to get a call from me?” Betty asks.

I draw a breath and make an effort to sound more calm. “What is it?”

“Is Cathy with you?”

“Not right now, no.”

Not anymore.

“Good, because I wanted to talk about her,” Betty says.

I shake my head. “There’s nothing we need to discuss about her, Betty.”

“But there is. I asked someone to look into Cathy’s background.”

I roll my eyes. Of course she did.

“Do you know that she has amnesia?” Betty asks.

“She can’t remember a few things. I know.”

“Or that she got so depressed after she nearly drowned that she stopped going to school?”

“Of course she was depressed. And it’s not because she nearly drowned. It’s because her best friend did drown. My sister.”

“Oh.” Betty sounds surprised.

So Cathy’s file didn’t say that, did it?

“I know what you’re doing, Betty, and I’m telling you now: Stop it.”

“I won’t. My granddaughter’s welfare, her future, her life are at stake here. I won’t have her living with a woman who’s mentally unstable.”

Yet she wants Maisie to live with her? That almost makes me laugh.

“Just stop it, Betty,” I tell her. “I mean it.”

I hang up. As I finish what’s left of my ice cream, now mostly a puddle, I curse the fact that Evelyn left me her mother. God, she’s the most difficult woman I know.

That’s not all Evelyn’s left me, though. She also left me Maisie, my greatest treasure. And memories. Memories to give me strength.

Don’t be afraid to find happiness, Jackson. I can almost hear those final words from her ringing in my ear, words that I thought I’d forgotten.

You deserve to be happy. Cathy’s words echo inside my head as well.

My lips curve into a smile as I remember that look in her eyes as she told me those words.

Who knows? With her help, I just might be.

Chapter 9

Cathy

“You look happy,” I tell Maisie as I glimpse her smiling face in the backseat through the rearview mirror.

“I had fun today,” she says. “I made a castle out of pink clay.”