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“Thanks, Chef!” Shelby and Chad cried in unison, which made Lily laugh. Although this wasn’t the same uproarious energy of their original family, it echoed with it. It made everyone miss Fred that much more. Even the chair across the table seemed to wait expectantly for him.
For dinner, Rebecca ordered a stack of pizzas. Her children were in front of the television, watching a show from Rebecca’s own youth and arguing over who the best characters were.
“You’re such a Phoebe, Lily,” Shelby said.
“That’s a compliment,” Lily returned. “Phoebe is weird and wonderful.”
“Don’t tell me I’m Ross,” Chad groused.
“You’re not. You’re Joey,” Shelby announced.
“Oh no.” Chad considered this, perhaps finding it even worse.
Rebecca smiled to herself from the kitchen. Fred had always adored his children. For a few years, he’d even made the case they should have more. “Three is plenty if we want to open our own restaurant,” Rebecca had insisted. Now, she couldn’t help but imagine who that fourth or fifth child in their family would have been. More people would have meant more of Fred left behind. She’d taken to smelling his shirts at night, praying the scent would never fade.
The crash itself had been almost too simple. A lifelong driver on snowy Maine roads, Fred had taken a turn too quickly and crashed into a tree. Life had a way of showing you just how little you understood about anything and that freak accidents could crop up whenever they pleased. Afterward, Rebecca had hardly driven all winter long and had sequestered herself at home, barely managing to clear the driveway when it snowed. The therapist she’d seen for a little while had helped her crawl out of this very dark depression, but when Rebecca had seen the therapist reading one of Victor Sutton’s recent therapy books, she’d immediately ended their sessions.
Rebecca insisted they sit at the kitchen table with their pizzas. Lily even turned the television off. As Lily ate with a knife and fork, the rest of them ate with their hands and spoke about their lives. Chad and Shelby had a few more weeks of school left, after which Shelby planned to head to her job in the Acadia Mountains, where she would stay and work as a forest guide for hikers and campers. “Your father would be so proud of you,” Rebecca said. Fred had scoured the Acadia Mountains with his children and taught them names of trees, flowers, and rocks. Around the time Shelby planned to leave, Chad had basketball camp in Virginia, which he’d attended every year since age twelve. Rebecca sensed he looked forward to it as a way of escapism. Fred’s shadow loomed over all of them.
“What is this internship you have?” Shelby asked Lily.
“Oh, it’s like social media and stuff,” Lily described without explaining.
Shelby nodded as though she understood.
“Mom told me about the dinner thing at Bar Harbor Brasserie?” Lily sounded doubtful. She had a forkful of pizza poised near her lips.
Shelby and Chad exchanged glances that told Rebecca they’d discussed this at length. Shelby softened her face.
“We’re worried about you,” she said to Rebecca.
Rebecca placed the rest of her slice back on the plate and wiped off her hands on a napkin. She felt like an exposed nerve. “I understand your concerns. I really do.” She spoke like a businesswoman to a board of directors. “But you’re all old enough to understand what I’m about to say.”
Chad set his jaw, imitating an older man.
“Opening a restaurant is just about the most heinous thing you can do for yourself and your finances,” Rebecca continued. “Your father was a cunning businessman, and he kept us in the black most of the time. Conveniently, the minute we closed in January, our rent went up. Not just a little bit, but a lot.”
Lily’s shoulders fell forward.
“As you know, we had a pop-up in the restaurant during the months of March and April, but the pop-up failed, and the owners have no interest in continuing the lease. I can’t hold the restaurant space much longer, praying I’ll be strong enough to reopen one day. I either have to bite the bullet and reopen, or…” Rebecca stalled. She did not want to say the truth out loud: that in order to keep herself and her children fed, clothed, and housed, she’d have to sell her and Fred’s dream, pick up the pieces of her life, and maybe get work elsewhere. The fact that she hadn’t so much as peeled a carrot since January was the least of her problems.
“Mindy Collins’s idea for a big fundraiser dinner at Bar Harbor Brasserie will buy us a bit of time,” Rebecca continued. “It’ll be like a test run. I’ve already told Dave about it, and he’s in, as are several other servers and kitchen staff members. They’ve missed Bar Harbor Brasserie and want us to reopen. And maybe I owe them that. Perhaps I owe myself that.”
Rebecca felt ridiculous. Her speech sounded straight out of a Rocky film. Unconvinced, her children glanced at one another and returned their attention to their pizza. Rebecca hurtled toward the remote control and turned the television back on. What had she been thinking when turning it off in the first place? She needed anything to eliminate the strain of their silences.
On the morning of the fundraiser dinner, Dave met Rebecca at the fish market at five forty-five in the morning. It was the end of May, and angry storm clouds floated in the early light. Dave hugged Rebecca warmly and handed her a cup of coffee. His emotions swayed easily, from eagerness to sorrow to excitement to fear.
Together, Rebecca and Dave had planned the four-course meal for the fundraiser. It featured clam chowder, pasta with a tart sardine sauce, Atlantic salmon, homemade bread, and a pear tart. Neighboring restaurants had contributed regional wines from their own cellars for the evening, grateful, they said, to be able to honor Fred and help his family.
Dave and Rebecca selected healthy-looking slabs of salmon, pounds of clams, and pounds of shining sardines. Little fish eyes glinted. Many vendors greeted Rebecca as family, asking her about Lily, Shelby, and Chad and saying they hoped to make it to the fundraiser later. “You’ve been an honored customer for years,” one of them told her. “It’s time for me to support you in return.”
With three coolers loaded with fish, Rebecca and Dave drove downtown to prepare the kitchen. Rebecca had hired cleaners to fine-tune the place, and she’d even had Dave go early in the week to sharpen knives and ensure the ovens, stovetops, fridges, and freezers were in working order. He reported Bar Harbor Brasserie was as functional as ever. It just didn’t have any working staff.
Outside the restaurant, Dave placed a hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “Do you want me to go in first?”
Rebecca’s nostrils flared. When had she become so weak? Frozen, she stared at the back door of Bar Harbor Brasserie, one through which she’d come and gone thousands of times. She wasn’t the first widow in the world. Women lost their husbands all the time.
“I can do it.” Rebecca’s keys jangled as she walked up to the door. Miraculously, the key turned, just as it always had, and she pressed herself into the familiar air of the back of the kitchen. Up ahead was her and Fred’s office, and farther down the hallway, the door opened to the immaculate dining room. Her knees wiggled beneath her and threatened to drop her to the ground. “Okay,” she told Dave. “Let’s get started.”
