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“Today’s the big day!” Dave swung open the back of the SUV and grabbed the cooler with ease.
“You make it sound like a celebration.” Rebecca laughed as she closed the SUV, then hustled out in front of him to open the back of the restaurant.
“Isn’t it? I mean, the governor picked our restaurant out of all the Bar Harbor restaurants to dine at,” Dave continued. He showed no strain from the weight of the enormous cooler.
“You know how I feel about too much optimism in my kitchen. It makes the fish stink,” Rebecca teased.
As Dave set aside the fish for the lunch rush and the evening courses, Rebecca breezed past the office to wave to Fred through the window. Fred waved back, a pen between his lips. She then scrubbed her hands, donned a hairnet and an apron, and began to prep potatoes as if her life depended on it. Ordinarily, she asked the kitchen staff to do this, but with her anxiety through the roof and about ten other things to prep for the night ahead, she’d decided to give herself the gift of peeling, washing, and slicing. It was meditative, reminiscent of her early days at culinary school. Back then, she hadn’t been married or had children. All she’d had were her dreams and a million potatoes before her.
In the middle of the lunch rush, Rebecca put Dave in charge and rushed back to Mount Desert High School to pick up Shelby from her second attempt at the SAT. Once she limped to the SUV, Shelby’s lower lip bounced around tragically as she explained what had gone wrong this time. Rebecca held her daughter against her chest for as long as her schedule allowed it, then a few seconds longer, before she announced that Shelby could retake the SATs as many times as she wanted to. “You’ll do it until it feels right.” She then traced the familiar path back to their family home, where Shelby planned to hide in bed and pretend the morning hadn’t happened. “I wish I could join you, honey,” Rebecca joked.
Lily had managed to throw herself downstairs and onto the living room couch, where she was plastered beneath a mountain of blankets. Shelby waved dully and disappeared upstairs as Lily blew her Rudolph nose.
“Oh, my poor baby.” Rebecca adjusted the blankets over Lily’s frail body. “Do you feel any better?”
“Not really,” Lily explained. “But the walls of my bedroom were closing in. I had to watch TV in a different place.”
Lily turned off her streaming platform, and the weather station took back over the television. The weatherman waved his authoritative hand over a smattering of snow clouds and smiled. Rebecca hadn’t known the forecast. Ten inches of snow before midnight? Would the governor still make it? Then again, this was Maine, so snow was a given. The governor himself called Maine residents “hardy stock.”
Lily groaned and stretched her arms over her head. “How’s it going at the restaurant?”
Rebecca flopped onto the edge of the couch. “Let’s just say I don’t have time to sit here with you. But I’m too exhausted to stand right now.”
“You have to take care of yourself, Mom,” Lily scolded her.
“Says the girl who got mono at a wild college party.”
“Maybe I got it there, or maybe I didn’t. And I never should have told you about that.” Lily feigned anger but was too exhausted to rise to it.
“Relax, honey. I’m glad you have friends down there,” Rebecca said. “But more than that, I’m glad you’re here with me for a little while.”
The weather channel went to a commercial. In the first, a little boy ate cereal with his grandfather, who imparted early morning wisdom. In the second, a water bowl for cats refilled itself when it was empty, at least until the larger basin ran dry. And in the third, a talk show host advertised her next guest—an accomplished and respected family and children’s psychologist named Victor Sutton.
“You know him. You love him. And more than that, you need his advice,” the talk show host said of Victor Sutton. “Many of you tuned in over a year ago when I last spoke with Victor as he helped me through the dark days of my divorce and custody hearing. It was incredibly difficult for me to open myself up to my viewers, but I know it brought many of you closer to living better and more fulfilling lives. I think I speak for both Victor and me when I say that’s why we do what we do.”
Rebecca snorted. Rage bubbled through her stomach and filled her chest. Victor Sutton? The brilliant family and children’s psychologist? Victor Sutton? The helper and healer? Had the world gone completely crazy?
“Sorry.” Lily changed the station quickly and flashed her mother a worried glance.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” Rebecca affirmed. “Watch whatever you want and sit tight. I’m going to make you a big bowl of soup. How does that sound?”
“The other kids with mono don’t have personal chefs at home,” Lily pointed out. “Should I pity them? Or rub this into their faces even more?”
Rebecca laughed and hurried to the kitchen, grateful for something else to do with her anxious mind. As she sliced garlic and onions, she tried her best to blink out the image of Victor Sutton, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. No, she hadn’t invited him to Maine for her wedding, nor after any of the births of her children. But by then, she’d gotten so close with Fred’s family that it hadn’t mattered. She was no longer a Sutton. It was over.
Before Rebecca left for the afternoon, Chad breezed through the front door. She wished him a final good luck on his game later, and he high-fived her with a dirty hand. She grimaced. “I’m cooking the governor’s meal with these hands later!”
Chad laughed. “Haven’t you heard of soap, Mom?”
Rebecca did her best to focus. The governor planned to dine at Bar Harbor Brasserie at seven thirty sharp, which was a half hour after Chad’s basketball game began. All of the other tables in the restaurant were booked for the night, which would allow Bar Harbor Brasserie to show off the impressive beauty of their other dishes. Rebecca prayed that nobody in the restaurant that evening would bother the governor. Her worst nightmare was that someone would demand answers about this recent tax bill just as the servers brought him the first course. Regardless of what you thought of his politics, the governor was a good man—and he loved Bar Harbor.
And who didn’t love Bar Harbor? It had been Rebecca’s chosen home since her early twenties. Sometimes at night, she dreamed of the beaches she’d once known on Nantucket, of the calm waters along the Nantucket Sound and the gentle beauty of Nantucket’s fields of daffodils. But more often, she thanked her lucky stars for Maine’s Acadia Mountains, its rocky coastlines, and its quiet yet compassionate people. Fred was from Maine, and he was the single greatest person she’d ever known. After years of torment, depression, and loneliness, meeting him had been like coming home.
The kitchen bustled with staff. Servers rushed around, adjusting their aprons and instructing the younger members to provide the best fine dining service. However, this benefited Rebecca’s restaurant’s reputation because Rebecca had always found it astounding how demeaning some of the more seasoned servers could get. She flashed one of her favorite staff members a warning glance, and as a result, the server backpedaled on her strictness, ultimately telling the younger girl to “just have fun out there.”
Rebecca had decided to flaunt her skills for the governor's multicourse dinner. She would begin with an appetizer of smoked salmon mousse, followed by pasta with lobster sauce, seafood risotto, pan-fried sea bass with lemon garlic herb sauce, and a crème brûlée. When she’d asked Fred’s opinion of the menu, he’d fallen to his knees and said, “Let’s close the restaurant on Sunday and enjoy that meal ourselves. When was the last time we sat together and enjoyed dinner, just us?” To this, Rebecca had joked, “I knew you would lose your mind over the seafood risotto.”
Around six, amid Rebecca’s prepping flurry, Fred appeared to kiss her good luck.
