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CHAPTER ONE

Looking back, Cam would decide it had all started with that damned tree. Hundreds of miles away from her quiet, orderly life in Brooklyn, the old cedar toppled, and like a domino that knocks into the next in a long chain, it upended everything. And sometimes she wondered if the tree had been pushed.

But those thoughts would come later.

For now, Cam Parker just had one thing on her mind: rhubarb. That is, she needed some. Pronto. Which was a very inconvenient fact given that it was mid-November and the city was doing that perfect fall thing where there was just a little nip in the air and leaves the color of Honeycrisp apples were drifting down to the sidewalks and everyone had pumpkins and gourds on their stoops. All of which Cam adored, but it meant rhubarb was most definitely not in season. She had been to three stores and every stall at the farmers market already, and the ruby-red stalks were proving elusive.

She sent a quick mental prayer up to the heavens—Cam wasn’t particularly religious, but she always pictured God as a figure who looked like Julia Child, a benign, no-nonsense deity with an apron tied neatly around her waist who might just help you out in a pinch—and swung the door open to Sergio’s. Parsley, the wire-haired dog beside her, let out a little yip, his ears turning up as the bell above the door tinkled.

“Miss Ca-mil-lia!” a voice from behind the counter rang out. “The most beautiful girl in my shop all day!”

Cam blushed at the proprietor’s compliment and at his use of her full name, looking around the cramped aisles to see if she was drawing any attention. Luckily, the only other shopper was an older woman so intently evaluating a head of cabbage that Cam could have screamed “Fire!” and the lady wouldn’t have lifted an eye. To everyone else, she was just Cam, but Sergio had a flair for the dramatic and a habit of shameless flirting, which she usually would have found annoying, but from the white-haired man old enough to be her grandfather, it was charming. And Cam didn’t dare correct him, at least not today, when he could be the key to getting her mitts on what was starting to feel like the most difficult thing in the city to score—harder, she thought, than a table at Carbone.

“What can I get for you today?” Sergio asked, not pausing for her to answer. “I know, I know, mushrooms! I got in the most beautiful chanterelles today. You gotta see them,” he boomed, grabbing a cardboard box containing what looked like a bouquet of yellow blossoms and holding it out to her with all the pride of a new father displaying his firstborn. “These were in the dirt this very morning!”

Cam bent forward and inhaled their woodsy, earthy scent, her mind’s eye instantly conjuring a hearty ragu sauce. Maybe a little thyme, she thought, diced fine, just a quarter teaspoon, to balance the meaty quality of the mushrooms. Tossed with pappardelle, a classic pairing. Would a touch of cream make it too rich? Before she fully fell down a rabbit hole in which she was stirring the mushrooms into Dijon-and-beef stew, she snapped herself back to the task at hand.

Such was the difficulty of being a cookbook writer, she had found. While so many chefs and gourmet cooks rhapsodized—rightly—about using seasonal products, a cookbook writer had to pay more attention to publishers’ deadlines than the temperatures outside. Just a few months ago, Cam had spent a sweaty July surrounded by Christmas cookies and holiday roasts. She had grilled steaks on her tiny balcony in the snow. And on a crisp autumn afternoon this week, she would, with a little luck, be testing out a dish of chicken with rhubarb compote so evocative of spring she half expected to smell daffodils in the air.

“Yes, I’ll take these,” she finally replied, nodding at the mushrooms. “Thank you, Sergio. They’re gorgeous!”

Sergio beamed. Cam knew the way to his heart was to compliment his produce.

“But I need something else, too,” she said, mentally wincing. Sergio wasn’t going to like this. “Some… rhubarb?”

Sergio’s grin faded, and his voice developed an agitated edge. “What, do I look like the Easter Bunny to you? Rhubarb is for April, for strawberries! I get the best rhubarb—so tender, not so tart and tough like the garbage in the supermarket! But for spring!” He was getting worked up. Sergio took his business seriously—produce was his religion, and the very idea of rhubarb in November was blasphemy.

“I know, I know,” Cam said. “I just really need it for one of my dishes. For work. I have a deadline at the end of the week, and I need to test this recipe. I’m going to be in really big trouble if I don’t. I could get fired.”

She was laying it on thick, hoping a convincing damsel-in-distress act would soften up Sergio. And it wasn’t too far from the truth. The chapter was due to the publisher, and Russell, her agent, would probably hit the roof if she was late. Not that she had ever missed a deadline before. But Russell was the kind of guy you didn’t want to test.

“Ahhh. Of course, the cookbook lady needs something impossible,” Sergio said, waggling his eyebrows and leaning in conspiratorially. “Tell me, who is this one for?”

Cam sighed. This was why she hadn’t come to Sergio first thing. His market carried the best vegetables and fruit in all of Brooklyn. And she was pretty sure he had a line to a hydroponic grower upstate who could get her that blasted rhubarb she needed. But Sergio was nosy. And happened to be the biggest gossip in all five boroughs to boot. She looked around again to make sure no one could overhear them. Cabbage lady had moved on to beets, which she was holding up to the light to examine as if they were the Dead Sea Scrolls.

“You know I can’t tell you, Sergio,” she said quietly. “I signed a contract, like I told you a hundred times. A nondisclosure agreement. I could get sued if I revealed who I was writing it for. You wanna pay for my lawyer?”

Sergio waved his hand in annoyance. “These fancy chefs with their faces on the cookbooks posing with their whisks and their knives—they’re a bunch of frauds! When it’s my Ca-mil-lia who does all the work!”

“I don’t mind it,” she said reassuringly. “It’s the job of a ghostwriter. And I like it. I wouldn’t want my name out there anyway. Besides, most of the people whose names are on the book give me the general ideas for the recipes. I just fine-tune them and make it so readers can follow the directions and the recipes come out right.”

Cam absentmindedly pulled from her bag the torn notebook page Meredith McAllister had handed her the last time they met. Chicken (thighs, i think—what do you think?) w/ rhubarb sauce of some kind? it read. Maybe w/ orange zest? Meredith was a former restaurant chef turned cookbook author known (thanks to Cam) for recipes that turned out perfectly, every time. Her four books, each of which Cam had ghostwritten, sold well, and her last one had even won a prestigious James Beard award.

The note in Cam’s bag was far different than the kind of detailed ideas and instructions Meredith had given Cam in the beginning. On the last project, the notes had dwindled down to a bare minimum of ingredient ideas peppered with lots of question marks. Not that Cam was complaining—certainly not to Sergio, and definitely not to Russell or to anyone else. Meredith was a dream to work with, the work was steady, and the pay was enough to keep her and Parsley in the modest lifestyle they’d grown accustomed to—enough for the rent on their cozy Brooklyn walk-up, a steady supply of books, the occasional good dinner out, and a trip to Paris every other year. Nice and uncomplicated. Just the way Cam liked it.

Sergio harrumphed. “You’re writing the book for the guy from the Food Network, I just know it! The one with all the fake teeth and the hair like a porcupine. He doesn’t look like a real chef to me. Too skinny!”

Cam suppressed a laugh. She wasn’t, in fact, working on Chaz Blakely’s book. But only because she had turned down the offer to work with him several years ago. He and his so-called brand just weren’t her style—way too much flash. Just thinking of all his inane signature phrases made her want to gag. And even though Chaz wasn’t the white-hot celebrity then, Cam had a sense he was on his way. She made a point never to work with people so famous. They were complication personified in her experience.

“I’m not telling you, Sergio,” she said firmly, hoping to get back to Topic A. “Now, about that rhubarb. I remember something about one of your suppliers doing hydroponics? Could you maybe ask him?”

Now it was Sergio’s turn to survey the shop to make sure no one was listening. He leaned over the counter, his voice a stage whisper. In his business, you were only as good as your sources, and Cam knew he guarded that kind of information like it was a state secret.

“Okay, so one of my guys might have mentioned it,” he said. “Wanted me to buy tomatoes from him in February. Bah—I don’t like hydro-whatever. All water! What is a vegetable without sunshine and dirt?”

“Please, Sergio? Can you just ask him for me?” Cam was keeping her voice down, too, though she wasn’t quite sure why. It felt like the two of them were engaged in an illicit drug deal. Then she used the ace up her sleeve she’d had in reserve all along.

“I could make you some of my minestrone,” she said, studying his face for a reaction. She knew she’d come at the right time—just before lunch, when Sergio was hungry. “I could bring it by when I pick up the rhubarb.”