Georgia felt a pang of longing at the word “oyster.” It conjured up very different images than Paris. The gray-blue waters of Westcott Bay and a strikingly handsome man in orange rubber overalls deftly twisting a shucking knife at the hinge of a closed oyster. She brushed away the images. She had left the island behind, and with it the frustrating puzzle of Dr.Cabot Cole Montgomery and his stubborn, broken heart. This was where her heart was. Paris was where she belonged.
And yet, as she washed the breakfast dishes after Phoebe left for work, Georgia couldn’t help but think of the island, so many miles away. For a moment, she could have sworn she smelled the pungent spice of evergreens and the sweetness of apple blossoms. Unexpectedly, she felt tears spring to her eyes. She tried to blink them away. Instead, a few rolled down her cheeks and into the corners of her mouth. Surprised, she licked at them. They tasted salty as seawater.
She froze, her hands in the soapy dishwater. She could taste them. She could taste the salt! Hastily drying her hands, she grabbed the saltshaker from Phoebe’s cupboard. She scattered a few grains of salt into her palm and licked them. No doubt about it. She could taste salty again. Slowly, she set the saltshaker down and leaned against the counter, overwhelmed with a feeling of almost euphoric relief. She had regained all the flavors just in time. She closed her eyes, feeling profoundly grateful. It was possible her sense of taste might vanish again as it had before, but she had a hunch that it wouldn’t. Not as long as she was pursuing wonder and delight, not if she continued to use her gift to bring joy to others. She thought of the upcoming competition and smiled. Now she could enter with confidence.
Later, as she unpacked her suitcase in search of her pajamas, she found her chef’s whites. They were wrapped aroundsomething small and heavy. Puzzled, she pulled out the bundle. As she did so, a shower of tiny, fresh four-leaf clovers fell to the floor. She brushed the bits of clover away and unfurled the chef’s whites. Wrapped up in the double-breasted jacket was a jar of Star’s lavender honey. Attached to the jar by a piece of twine was a note scrawled on a slip of paper. In Star’s handwriting it said simply:
Georgia May,
For when you get hungry.
Your mama, Star
Georgia held the jar up to the light, gazing at the dark golden color of the honey, remember the buzzing of the bees, the fragrance of the apple orchard laced with the briny scent of the sea.
On impulse, she twisted the lid off the jar and swirled her finger through the honey. She licked it clean. She could just catch a hint of lavender in the creamy goodness. She scooped up another little dollop. Strange. Somehow, the honey tasted like love, like the answer to a question, like coming home.
•••
For the nextweek and a half, Georgia allowed herself to luxuriate in Paris. She had no obligations on her time until the competition other than planning her menu for Michel, so in the mornings, she wandered the city, indulging in espresso and pastries, meandering through gardens and squares, into and out of museums. She visited the Musée d’Orsay and took the elevator up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, sat before the resplendent Monet water lilies in the Musée de l’Orangerie, and listened to the nuns sing at Sacré-Coeur high above the city. One day she picnicked with one of her old roommates for along lunch, sharing wine and a fresh crusty baguette and a pat of Camembert under the chestnut trees in the Luxembourg Gardens. One evening she met up for drinks with Phoebe and a handful of casual friends who were not connected to the restaurant world. Almost every day, she treated herself to lemon, pistachio, and orange blossom macarons at Ladurée, delighting with every bite in her ability to taste again. As she walked and sat and ate and soaked in the beauty, art, and culture, she remembered what had drawn her to Paris in the first place. It was a sublime city.
Yet for all its charms, she found herself unexpectedly longing for something entirely different. For the spicy smell of evergreens in loamy soil, for the briny air blowing in from the bay, for the homey simplicity of the kitchen table, the buzz of Star’s happy bees. It took her by surprise, and it was several days before she could finally name the pangs in her heart that accompanied these brief snatches of memory. She was homesick.
Surely not, she told herself in surprise, standing in front of the glass pyramid at the Louvre trying to talk herself out of longing for the quiet rolling hills of the island, for the silver shimmer of the water on Westcott Bay, for a sometimes prickly dark-haired oysterman, for a slightly worn-out hippie who smelled of cannabis and herbs and who made her feel so loved. How could she be homesick for a place and people she’d known only a few weeks? How could anything be better than Paris? It annoyed her, and she tried to push it away, but the feeling remained, sneaking up on her at the oddest times. She dressed like a Parisian, ate like a Parisian, spoke her most polished French, but she could not stop her traitorous and unruly heart from longing for something she’d left an ocean away.
Cooking proved to be unexpectedly complicated as well. Every day after lunch, Georgia trawled the local food markets ofParis, bringing home bags brimming with ingredients. She had planned to make her signature cuisine—classic French with a Texas twist—but instead found herself straying toward the type of dishes she’d cooked at Anemone. Instinctually, she sought out salmon and oysters, seaweed and apples, instead of leeks and fromage. It surprised her that she would draw such inspiration from somewhere she’d been for so short a time. But the island had captured her culinary imagination. There was no denying it.
She tried to get herself back in line, cooking a perfectly adequate cassoulet with a side of fresh ramps for dinner one night with Phoebe and a batch of gougères for a snack the next day. But she had to admit, her typical French dishes lacked inspiration. They were sufficient but did not thrill.
“Julia, what do I do?” she asked in exasperation, poking one of the gougères and grimacing. The cheese puffs should be light and airy. There were a little doughy and too dense.
“The trick,” she heard Julia confide in her ear, “is to discover something you’re truly passionate about and then to simply keep doing it.”
Georgia looked at her cheese puffs. They were not interesting. She remembered the thrill she had felt cooking at Anemone. She wanted to feel it again.
“Okay,” she said aloud, capitulating. “I get it.”
And so, with just a few days to go before the competition, she gave up and embraced her creative spark. She stopped trying to force herself to cook the way she had before she’d been on the island and simply acknowledged the truth. Her time on the island had changed her. She had regained her spark there, and she didn’t want to risk squashing that precious gift again.
“I’ll cook whatever delights me,” she announced to Phoebe’s empty kitchen. She would choose the ingredients that intriguedher, even if she wasn’t quite sure what she would do with them. She sent up a little petition for help to Julia, praying that this path would lead her toward the culmination of her long-held dream and not into some sort of last minute spectacular culinary disaster.
“Please let this be the right thing and not a mistake,” she whispered.
“When you make a decision, you must then go forward with confidence and courage,” she heard Julia say bracingly. “Nothing good was ever accomplished in the kitchen by a cook being faint of heart.”
Confidence and courage. Georgia squared her shoulders. Julia was right; this was not a time to be faint of heart. And on Saturday, she would find out if her leap of faith was going to pay off.
36
The Saturday ofthe competition dawned fair and warm, a perfect blossoming day in May. Georgia was a bundle of nerves. Everything felt off-kilter except the ingredients in her hand. She packed her supplies in two wheeled trolleys and donned her chef’s whites. Michel had texted her detailed instructions the week prior, so she knew what to expect and what she needed to bring with her. At the last second, she wrapped her Hermès scarf around her hair and applied her signature red lipstick.
Sending lots of love and luck today –xoxo, Phoebe texted. She was at a photo shoot in the gardens of Versailles. Georgia kept checking her phone, but no other texts came through. She felt a twinge of disappointment. What had she expected? She’d left the island in a fit of pique. She’d burned all her relational bridges behind her. It was not a surprise that no one had reached out to her since she’d left.
There was no one to see her off, so she let herself out of the apartment and took an expensive taxi to La Lumière Dorée. It was too unwieldy to haul all her ingredients on the Metro single-handedly. The taxi got snarled in traffic, and she arrived a few minutes late, feeling a little harried and off-kilter. Michel was waiting for her at the door. He greeted her with the customary kisses on each cheek and stepped back to survey her.
“The island agreed with you,” Michel said, looking her overapprovingly as they walked. “I see you have regained your joie de vivre.”
Georgia paused, surprised by his perception. “I think so,” she said, smiling brightly and trying not to think of Star and Cole and the island. “So sorry I’m a little tardy. I’m ready.”
