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plenty of oxygen in the room. She’d just thought there wasn’t.
Her brain had played a trick on her. Maybe her heart was
playing tricks too.
No, that was serious. That was real.
She flipped on the lights and then did something that she
hadn’t done in almost eleven years. She started cooking. The
fridge was fully stocked. She knew the recipes from memory.
She let her hands fly, old instincts taking over. She was
moving. And she was doing the one thing that she’d once
loved more than anything in the world.
Cooking had kept her sane. It had saved her life. She’d
learned from the chef that her family employed, Hannah. She
wasn’t just a good woman. She was a great woman. She’d
taken pity on a sorry, aimless teenager and shared her passion.
Claire wasn’t sure that she had ever truly loved anything until
that moment.
She was fourteen. It was Christmas Eve. Late. They never
got to open presents early. There were no special celebrations.
Claire’s dad was working, as he often did. She’d overheard her
mom on the phone. Yelling at him. Accusing him. Claire had
been far too old not to know what her dad was doing when he
wasn’t at home all those nights he was working late. Her sister
was asleep, blissfully unaware. Unnerved at hearing her mom
on the phone when she’d gone down for a glass of water,
Claire kept going, all the way to the kitchen. She found
Hannah hard at work even though it was past midnight, baking
and prepping for the next day.
Hannah was well acquainted with the moods in the
household, and she knew things had to be just right. She’d
kept her job for years. She was used to Claire’s dad.
