Page 5 of You Know Why

He laughs. “Listen to yourself. Where’s my adventurous wife? Don’t worry. All that is taken care of. The reservations have been made, the flights and the first hotel booked. Bob just changed his reservations over to me, and we added you and the kids. We fly from here to Heathrow, then on to Milan. And don’t worry about the passport. Pat knows a guy.”

“Knows a guy who can get passports overnight? Is that even legal?”

“Sure. This happens all the time, babe. People have to go to meetings overseas, and there are ways to expedite them. We’ll have it tonight. All we need to do is find places to stay in the other cities we want to visit, and I know you can manage that. Easy peasy. Also, price is no object. This is all on Bob and Pat.”

“That’s awfully generous. I should call them and say thanks.”

“Give it a few days. They’re tied up in meetings. Trust me. It’s going to be amazing.” He pauses. “Unless you’d rather me go alone . . . I just assumed you’d leap at the chance for a big trip.”

“You are not going to Italy alone,” I assure him, and his face splits open again into that heartbreakingly happy smile. “I’ll get the kids sorted. We’ll probably have to find a Nutcracker showing somewhere to appease your daughter. She’s been practicing for months.”

“We can do that.”

“But need I point out the last, but most obvious, flaw in your plan? You hate to fly.”

“Yes, well, sometimes we all need to make sacrifices.”

He kisses me once more and leaves me there, mouth agape, trying to figure out how I can make this work. How I can drop everything and leave the country in twenty-four hours.

So you understand—it was, it is, out of character, what happened. The days leading up to the moment things changed forever. The surprise. The trip. The leaving. The email. The stranger. The secret.

All of it.

I didn’t see any of this coming.

How could I?

Hauntings

Luckily, I am very good at the art of traveling, and although perhaps a bit out of practice, I know how to get on the move quickly. I drop everything and focus on getting us out the door.

But add in two very excited children and a distracted husband, all three buzzing around and being totally useless—the kids wanting to take items that are entirely impossible to lug around Europe, the last-minute changes to their schedules—as well as submitting the article for my deadline and arranging for my sister to stay with the dog, doing laundry, packing, clearing my schedule, watering the plants, resetting Margot’s guest room, and it nearly does me in.

Once the kids are in bed and Trey is snoring, I finish the trip preparations in peace. Our cocker spaniel, Bohdi, keeps me company, silently padding from room to room as I fold, pack, straighten, list, and fret.

Despite the annoyances of last-minute travel, I am genuinely excited to go on this trip. Trey wasn’t wrong when he poked fun at me for not being adventurous. That’s not me at all.

I was not always a staid, steady food blogger, suburban wife and mother, homemaker, and dreamer. I was once one of the most sought-after travel food photographers in the industry. Which meant I was on the go for years, and last minute was my middle name.

My photos have appeared in magazines and cookbooks, and have been featured on television shows worldwide. I’m not famous, but I spent plenty of time being famous adjacent. And then I got the gig with Bandolier’s show, traveling the world looking over the great man’s shoulder with a macro prime lens. That was chaos, but in a good way. Roger Bandolier was a brilliant, brash showman of a chef who loved his drugs almost as much as he loved food. He left a mark on me. For many reasons.

Some memories you cherish and keep close to your heart. Some, you cringe in embarrassment. And others, you run away from, at all costs.

Bandolier is one of those. A ghost from the past that I do everything in my power to avoid thinking about. His death changed me. There is a Before Roger, and an After. Because of him, my portfolio is diverse and extensive, encompassing a wide range of the most esoteric and common aspects of the food world. Because of him, I left my nomadic life behind in favor of family and stability.

“Kind of rude to ignore me, too.”

Go away, I plead as another ghost from my past appears. Please, just go away.

Alex. My ex of all exes. Of course he would rear his head tonight. He’s been gone since Bandolier, and good riddance to them both. Did they play a role in where I am now? Absolutely. Do I want to remember them? Not at all.

But because of Roger, my professional bio is rather ridiculous; recently updated by the magazine’s publicist, it romanticizes the hell out of my actual skill set:

IPA winner Brooklyn Thomas has photographed gauchos grilling asado over open fires in the Argentine grasslands and documented the volcanic soils of Tolima during the coffee harvest, climbing steep mountainsides with farmers to hand strip cherries off the trees. She’s captured the vibrant colors of Vietnamese floating markets, shadowed New Zealand’s fair trade cacao production from bean to conching to tempering, and learned traditional grappa methods from grandmothers in small Italian villages. Serving as staff photographer for the international cooking show Sargasso Sea, she spent two years traveling the world with Roger Bandolier. Her favorite adventure, though, might be the moment she learned the secret behind the perfect baguette in a Michelin-starred kitchen in Paris.

Blah, blah, blah. And that last bit is a lie. Granted, the whole baguettes-in-Paris thing wasn’t terrible. But my actual favorite moment was when I took a wrong turn in the Umbrian countryside trying to find a remote Etruscan village, only to stumble upon a small family-run vineyard with the most luscious Sagrantino DOCG I’ve ever had. I used their bathroom, and when I came out, they’d arranged a full display of their wares for an impromptu tasting. They wanted to grow and export to the US but didn’t have the connections. I got them the connections. Now they’re sought after all over the world, and they still send us a case of my favorites every Christmas, just in time for the party we throw. The party we held this past weekend. There are still open bottles on the counter—one more thing on my mental to-do list to clean up before we leave. And another: We should plan an afternoon to drop by, say thank you.

Yeah. It’s pretty easy to be jealous of my past. Winning the IPA was definitely a high point, as was working on Sargasso Sea. But there were not-so-great moments, too. Being harassed on a bus by a gang of Indian teenagers in New Delhi. The run-in with a handsome Albanian in the hotel bar in New York, who decided he was going to take me home with him, permanently, whether I wanted to go or not. That night in Thiviers with Roger and Alex that I never, ever discuss.