“He’s just a sweet angel baby!”
“Or a predator who knows how to hunt.”
Kiara rolls her eyes. “Poppy is really nice. We might go riding together sometime. See how easy it is to be friends with someone?”
“She rides horses?”
That also checks out. Her dad probably bought her a pony for her eighth birthday.
She doesn’t take the bait. “I’m serious, Jack. Text Chester.”
“I will. I swear!” I add when she spears me with a look.
She relaxes. “Good.”
“Speaking of Poppy...” I polish off the rest of my taco, still stalling. “She wants to know if I’m going to change the restaurant’s name.”
“Are you?”
I shrug. Now that I’ve brought it up, I’m not entirely sure how to approach this.
“Hmm.” Kiara wipes her hands on her napkin. “Why don’t you look in the box.”
Reluctantly, I slide out of my chair.
She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not going to bite.”
I scowl. “I know.”
“I found it in Dad’s room.” She watches as I sink to my knees and pull off the lid, revealing stacks of legal pads covered in Sal’s handwriting, a few stained, warped spiral-bound notebooks, and recipes with notes in the margins cut out of newspapers.
I pick up one of them, a cutout fromThe New York Times. Scallops with brown butter, capers, and lemon. Sal’s note in the margin:Let scallops cook one minute longer than indicated. More lemon.Underneath, I see an old menu for the Sailfish, the navy-blue type faded. He always kept a lean menu, preferring to change things with the seasons.Spring 2006, it says in the corner. The first item on it is shrimp ceviche with serrano pepper and orange juice.
I keep pulling out recipes, glancing at them before stacking them neatly beside me. I haven’t started to conceptualize my menu, but maybe some of these will be useful. “He always had good instincts for flavor.”
Kiara slips onto the floor across from me. She digs through the box, pulling out a bent notebook. “I like this one best, though.”
I groan when I see the tape on the cover. “Ki.”
“Look at it.”
“He kept this? Really?”
She shoves it into my hands. It’s just a crappy spiral notebook, but my name is scrawled across the cover on a piece of masking tape, the classic way of labeling something in a kitchen. I open it slowly, scanning the pages for what I know will be inside. Messy notes and even messier drawings. I can make a beautiful dish, but it’s locked in my head until it’s time to put it all together. At Pastiche, I was jealous of Hazel’s ability to draw the plate Jimmy described so we could use it as a guide.
I wonder if there’s any chance she’d ditch Pastiche for the Sailfish.
“Why wouldn’t he keep it?” Kiara leans over the box, flipping through to a page in the back of the notebook. “Look, this is my favorite part.”
I stare at the list I made more than a decade ago:Future Restaurant Names. I’m glad my beard covers the proof of my embarrassment. I was still a kid, then. Dreaming for the first time in my life. I shut the notebook quickly.
Ki doesn’t need to know that Sal wanted me to stick with the Sailfish after graduation. That for all his support, he didn’t think I could grow beyond Diamond Bay. Or that he thought I was a coward.
“If you were going to change the name, what would you call it?”
It comes to mind immediately.Fable. A name on that original list, one I’ve carried around in my heart for years. One I thought of because of Sal.
“I don’t know.”
