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“Like I said, Ophelia is scary,” Jolene said, shrugging. “So, are you ready for tonight?”
“What’s tonight?”
“I’m droppin’ these clothes off, and then you, me, Jane, and Andrea are goin’ out for a girls’ night. Jane hasn’t made any of the plans, so we should be safe. Think you’re up for it?”
I snorted. “I think I’m ready for whatever nightlife Half-Moon Hollow can dish out.”
—
I was so not ready.
Girls’ night, apparently, meant The Cellar, where it was “Country-Western Night,” and Jane never paid for drinks, because she’d rescued the owner-bartender during an attempted robbery a few years ago. So we had not only unlimited alcohol but also access to a mechanical bull.
One of the few things I could remember clearly about the evening was being grateful that Sam wasn’t home when I stumbled through the front door around 2:00 A.M. and broke my fall with my face. But according to the pictures Andrea saved to my phone, I had not only ridden the mechanical bull, I’d borrowed a stranger’s cowboy hat to make my experience more authentic. I thought the hat went very nicely with Andrea’s sparkly black tank top. And the western-wear lover’s phone number appeared to be scrawled on my arm, next to “Call me, Cowgirl!”
Oh, well, at least he was cute, according to the picture that showed me returning his hat and giving him a big wet kiss on the cheek.
The rest of the pictures included various shots of Jolene attempting karaoke, Jane hugging Norm, the cuddly bartender whose life she’d saved, and the four of us gathered at the bar, shot glasses in hand, giggling our asses off while Jolene tried to fit all of us into the frame.
At some point, my friends’ husbands dropped by to scrape our inebriated asses off the barroom floor and drive us home. I’d met Zeb before and liked him. Underneath his oily charm, the vampire Dick Cheney was a really sweet guy who clearly loved Andrea and his friends with the ferocity of a pissed-off honey badger. I sort of recalled that the one guy who tried to hit on me in his presence was given the scariest stink-eyed glare this side of a correctional facility. Jane’s Gabriel was more of a mystery, all brooding silence and stiff upper lip, until Jane made some ridiculous joke and he smiled like a man seeing boobs for the first time. But in a really romantic, courtly way.
The final picture was a group shot taken by Norm. Somehow I ended up in the middle of all of those couples without sticking out like the sore single thumb. I looked happy. Not just drunk-giddy or relaxed but genuinely, no-holds-barred happy. I couldn’t remember seeing that expression on my own face since… I couldn’t remember seeing that expression on my face.
Still, it was the deepest night’s (and most of the morning’s) sleep I’d had since I arrived in the Hollow. I rolled onto my back, and the reverberating pain in my head made me instantly regret moving. Zeb, my designated driver, had apparently left a glass of water and some Advil next to my bed when he’d dropped me off. I lifted my head from the pillow, just barely, to look at my alarm clock and saw that I was supposed to be meeting Chef Gamling at the Half-Moon Hollow First Baptist Church in less than an hour. Moving gingerly, I eased up from the bed and reached for the water glass. It only took me three tries to pick it up.
After scrubbing off eau de barroom, I discovered that Sam not only had soaked all of my clean bras and put them in the freezer, but he had also destroyed yet another cheap pot and left it in the sink. After preparing my traditional hangover cure of a bacon, egg, and tomato sandwich, I barely had time to Super Glue Sam’s car keys to the counter before I was due to meet Chef.
The Half-Moon Hollow First Baptist Church was one of those classic brick churches with stained-glass windows. I felt nervous walking through the back entrance of the fellowship, as if God would reject my hungover presence in his house like a faulty kidney. But he let me walk all the way into the industrial-sized kitchen unscathed, so figured I wasn’t his top “smiting” priority.
Chef Gamling was already stationed at the counter, shredding cheddar from a block the size of a football. A gigantic stock pot boiled on the stove, while another pot held a huge batch of green beans with bits of bacon. I could smell ham baking and the cinnamon-spice mix Chef used for his special apple pie recipe.
“Are we catering a party?” I asked.
He turned and leveled a critical gaze at my clean jeans and T-shirt, the sensible shoes and tight ponytail. He tossed an apron at me. “You’ll do.”
My transition back to Chef’s galley slave was made with alarmingly little force. He had me chopping veggies, straining pasta, making a roux for the basic white sauce he needed. Dealing with hot butter fats was particularly cruel given my hungover state, but I think that was probably the point to Chef’s exercise.
“What exactly are we making?” I asked as he added the shredded cheese to the white sauce.
“Macaroni and cheese,” he said. “Ham. Granny Houston’s famous green beans—a recipe I had to barter a Le Creuset casserole for, thank you—and apple pie.”
“For what?”
“The church has Saturday-afternoon fellowship meals. Everybody from the community is welcome, whether they pay or not, whether they’re members of the church or not. The pastor thinks it’s important for everybody to gather for a good meal, for no other reason than to spend time together. Usually, they play board games or volleyball, depending on the weather. I think the plan for today is an Uno tournament.”
“You’re going to all this trouble—aged cheddar, sauce from scratch, what appears to be green beans combined with bacon, butter, and brown sugar—so you can feed a church crowd mac ’n’ cheese before a card game?”
“These people deserve good food, carefully prepared, whether it’s simple fare or a wedding feast. They’re going to share a meal, something to bring them closer together. That’s the point of what we do, Tess. Not the reviews or the interviews. Good food. Happy diners. That’s all there is.”
He pinned me with that frank gray gaze, and I felt a little ashamed of myself. “Now, be a good girl and stir the sauce.”
With that, he popped me on the butt with a dishtowel and returned to his nutritionally bankrupt green beans.
—
When I was in college, I saw cafeteria serving as the last stop before culinary oblivion. I had nightmares in which I woke up patting my head to make sure the hairnet wasn’t really there. But now I found that I liked greeting people as they came through the kitchen line for their lunches. I liked being able to talk to friendly faces as they moved by, complimenting the colors of the food or the delicious smells wafting up from the steam table.
I’d never had this sort of contact with customers before. Phillip did his damnedest to make sure I was insulated from dealing with overenthusiastic customers. I rarely left my kitchen, just in case.
