Back in Phoebe’sapartment, Georgia slipped off her clogs but kept her chef’s whites on. They felt like a second skin to her. She unpacked the contents of the two trolleys, stowing the leftover ingredients in Phoebe’s tiny refrigerator. Her stomach growled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She’d been too nervous to eat before the competition. All she’d had was an espresso. Now she was feeling grumpy, confused, and hungry. Confungry... was that an adjective?
She grabbed two fresh eggs from the bowl on Phoebe’s counter and some of the leftover chèvre she’d used earlier in her dish for Michel, then went hunting for the butter. She found it on the counter in a pretty little patterned dish with a lid. She lifted the lid and stopped short. Sitting on the pat of butter was a single four-leaf clover. Georgia rolled her eyes and picked up the slightly buttery stem.
“Okay,” she said aloud. “This is getting ridiculous! What do you want to tell me?” If ever there was a time when she would welcome a secret message, this was it.
Silence.
With a sigh, she set the clover on her plate and turned her attention to her omelet. In her mind, she could hear Julia instructing her step-by-step in the fine art of making the perfect French omelet. No egg dish was simpler or more effortlessly French. It was the first recipe of Julia’s she’d really mastered. She put thefrying pan over high heat, then cracked the eggs into a little bowl and beat them until they were well mixed.
“Now first you must make sure to use at least a very generous tablespoon of butter,” Julia cautioned. Georgia spooned a large dollop of butter into the hot pan. It immediately began to sizzle.
“And then just before the butter begins to turn brown, you quickly add your eggs to the very hot pan.”
Georgia poured the egg mixture into the pan and let it bubble for a few seconds, then began to vigorously swirl and shake the pan over the heat.
“Now see how beautifully those eggs are coalescing in the bottom of the pan to make a quintessential French omelet?” Julia observed, looking pleased.
A moment later, Georgia slid her omelet onto her plate and walked outside to Phoebe’s tiny terrace. There was a single metal chair wedged beneath a table the size of an envelope. She settled into the hard chair with a sigh, taking a moment to orient herself. Lifting her face to the warm spring sunlight, she listened to the sounds of the city below, drinking in the view stretching out before her. Paris. She’d had so many happy years here. What had changed? The obvious answer was her.
“What are you trying to tell me?” she repeated, picking up the little clover stem from the edge of her plate and twirling it between her fingers. She thought of what Star had told her about her gift, that she brought clarity to people with her cooking. Would it work for her? Could she bring clarity to her own heart?
On impulse, she pulled off the four leaves of the clover and sprinkled them over the omelet. Why not give it a try? Clover was edible, with a slightly lemony flavor. Not a terribly appealing plant to eat, but tolerable in small quantities.
“Today I ask for faith, hope, love, and luck,” she whispered,not at all sure this was going to work. “Please show me what I need to see.” As she spoke the words, she realized she was not petitioning Julia but speaking to the island, to the Stevens women—Star and Emma and Helen—and to her own heart. She didn’t know who or what was sending her these signs in the form of four-leaf clovers. Perhaps it was the island as Star suspected, or the universe, or Emma and Helen. The origin was a mystery, and in a way, the source didn’t really matter. She just wanted to know what it all meant. What were the four-leaf clovers trying to reveal to her?
She took her first bite. It was rich and creamy, the eggs just set, with a custard-like texture. The first mouthful was perfect—the flecks of clover a bright and bitter counterpoint to the decadent eggs. She licked her fork and scooped up a second bite. As she did so, she was suddenly struck with an almost overwhelming wave of homesickness. Not for Texas or for Paris, but for the island, the cottage, the few weeks she’d spent there. For Star.
She saw herself sitting at the simple white painted kitchen table—Star and Cole and her and Billy, playing Scrabble. Cole carefully laying out the word “crave,” his eyes never leaving hers, and her cheeky response, “kiss.” Her face flushed, remembering their heated kisses in the cool dark of the night after the Oyster Shuck. Cole’s word on his last turn had been “ache.” Georgia had responded with her final word, “gone.” But in her mind, she saw herself swap out two of the letters, picking up an “h” and an “m.” Instead of “gone,” she could have played “home.”
There it was. Seeing the word laid out in Scrabble tiles on the table, Georgia felt a stab of longing so intense that for a moment she could not draw a breath. A longing for the gnarled apple trees, for the happy hum of Star’s bees, for the brooding but kind man with ice-blue eyes and orange rubber overalls who was wasting his life with regret, for the woman with the gray-greeneyes who was holding out her hands to Georgia, for a life that was slipping away with every sunrise she spent here.
She set down her fork with a clatter. What was she still doing in Paris? It all seemed so clear now. Paris was her past, a long-ago dream she’d gotten to live for many years. But Paris was not her future. Her future lay in another direction entirely.
“I want to go back,” she said aloud, startling a pigeon on a nearby rooftop. “I want to go back to the island. I want to go home.”
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Georgia looked down at the omelet on her plate. Was this what people experienced when they ate her food? This clarity, almost painful in its intensity? She took another bite and another until she’d cleaned her plate.
As she sat there high above the rooftops of Paris, Georgia gazed out at the city she’d loved and longed for all those years growing up. Paris had always been her dream. How was she ready to leave it now? It felt... over. And for the first time, she wondered if Paris had ever really been the thing she sought.
“Was my dream ever really about Paris?” she whispered. “Was it ever even about Julia?” Perhaps Paris and Julia had just been vehicles for the deeper longings of her heart—to be valued, worthy, loved, enough. Things she had desperately desired to hear from her mother, but couldn’t until now. Maybe Paris and Julia were simply stand-ins, the best she could do, the closest she could get to finding the acceptance, affirmation, and value she longed for with all of her young heart.
“All these years,” she murmured, “I think I might have been chasing the wrong thing, believing it would be the answer.” But instead, she had finally found what she desired so deeply, not in Paris, not with the fulfillment of her life’s goal, but after herlife here had shattered. On the island, she had found the answer she had been looking for. The answer in her lineage of strong women gifted with extraordinary abilities. The answer in Star’s calloused hands the first time she cupped Georgia’s face with a look of tender wonder in her eyes. The answer in Cole’s accepting, admiring gaze as he whirled her around the dance floor at the Oyster Shuck, in his kiss, in his frank admission,Georgia May Jackson, I have never met someone like you. I think you hung the moon.
There had been an answer too in the hours she had spent in the Anemone kitchen, regaining her spark, learning to embrace delight again, to use her gift to bring clarity to others. Now that same gift was bringing clarity to her own heart.
She saw it with aching certainty now. It had never been about Paris and Julia. It had been about something so much deeper. On the island, with Star and Cole and Anemone, she had found what she’d been searching for her entire life, the thing that had driven her from Texas to Paris, seeking Julia, seeking to live out her dream. It had been her motivation all these years. She had found belonging, acceptance, a sense of her own worth. She had discovered her true self.
“It took me twenty-some years, but I finally figured it out,” she murmured in amazement.
“It’s all worth it in the end if things turn out the way they should,” Julia said comfortingly, pulling an artichoke from a pot of boiling water with tongs and plunging it into an ice bath.
Georgia nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “And I know what I need to do now.”
She stood, picking up the empty omelet plate speckled with vivid green bits of clover. She was going back to the island. She knew it would be excruciating to watch Star slip away as herillness progressed, but the thought of not being with her mother felt impossible. She had already lost so much time; she didn’t want to waste a minute more.
Her revelation did not erase the years of Star’s mistakes. Georgia still felt a hard knot of anger and grief low in her belly when she thought of her parents’ past actions and how much they had cost her. It did not magically anesthetize the pain she felt over so many years of their bad choices. But she knew one thing clearly: Despite all her hurt and anger, she wanted to be there with Star from here on out, come what may. She wanted to spend the time they had left together, however short it might be. It was worth it. She would untangle the past and her complicated feelings about it later. There was not a moment to lose.
