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“Is it normal for you to be here this early to prep?” Hadley asked, putting her apron on and gathering her ingredients.
She needed to make another batch of blondies. They’d sold out yesterday. More jam to go on top of it and then she was going to make double fudge brownies with homemade whipped cream. Customers could choose caramel or fruit topping or both. She’d wanted to make a cake, but Duke pointed out that they were closed on Monday and brownies would be easier and the employees could take home anything that didn’t sell. She’d start fresh on Tuesday when she came in again.
“No,” Diane said. “I’m done. I’m cleaning my shit out and leaving. I just didn’t think anyone would be here while I did it.”
Her jaw dropped. “You’re scheduled to work today though, right?”
“I was,” Diane said. “I don’t work on the weekends. That was my agreement with your father. I like to do my own thing and don’t like being told what to do. It’s not my problem that Will couldn’t work today. Duke is running it; he can fill the damn shift himself.”
Crap. She didn’t want to hear this. “You’ve never worked a weekend before when Will was off?” she asked.
“Nope. Your father or mother would fill in or they’d get the line cooks to do it, if Stacy couldn’t. They had people on backup or something. Not sure, not my problem. It’s Duke’s.”
Diane was stomping around the place and gathering her things. Diane worked on Friday night. If she was going to do this why not say something then? Might as well ask that. “Does Duke know you are leaving today?”
“I’m going to text him in a few. Maybe,” Diane said, laughing. “It would serve him right if no one was here to cook. I mean it’s not like no one would be here. Carl and Stephanie will be here.”
Two of the line cooks. “But that’s not right,” she said.
“What do you care?” Diane said. “You’re just here until you find another job. If you cared all that much you would have come back and taken over when your father couldn’t figure things out.”
Hadley ground her teeth. She wasn’t getting into a pissing match. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said. “You couldn’t just work for today and then give your notice?”
“No,” Diane said. “My boyfriend wanted to go off the island today and I don’t want to be working while he does.”
That didn’t sound like a good reason to her, but she wouldn’t say that either. She just got to work and minded her own business.
“Good luck to you,” she said when Diane stormed out the door.
It was a good fifteen minutes and the guilt got the better of her that Diane might not let Duke know what she just did.
In good conscience she couldn’t let it go and pulled her phone out and sent Duke a text. She wasn’t going to call him. A text would be good enough. Just to see if Diane reached out to him.
Not even a minute later her phone rang. She wiped her hands and hit the button for hands free so she could keep measuring and stay on pace.
“What’s going on?” Duke asked. “Why did you ask if Diane got in touch with me?”
Dang it. Guess she didn’t. “Ahh, she quit like fifteen minutes ago. I don’t think she thought anyone would be here. I asked if you knew and she said she’d tell you. Then laughed and said, maybe. There was part of me that wondered if she wouldn’t.”
“Nope. Fuck,” he said. “I should have seen this coming. She threw a fit when I put her on for Sunday, but she never said she’d leave if she had to work it. Not that I’d care, but I could have had the shift covered.”
“I made a comment about it not being right to leave no one here. She said Carl and Stephanie were here.”
“They are, but neither one is a chef. They don’t know how to cook most of the things on the menu the way I do or keep up the pace of the kitchen for a full shift. Sure, they can fill in, but that is it.”
She sighed. “I’m glad I called you then.”
“Me too. Shit. Someone will be there by eleven,” he said. “No worries. Thanks, Hadley.”
He hung up on her before she could say bye. He did that a lot. She knew he was a busy man, but geez.
She got back to work and an hour later heard the back door open. She turned expecting to see someone she didn’t know. Maybe one of the employees he had working at Duke’s. He seemed to have some good staff that filled in on the front end already.
What she didn’t think was it’d be Duke walking in the door. “Are you working here today?”
“It looks it,” he said. “I wasn’t scheduled to go into Duke’s until four anyway. They can cover for me a few hours there. If it’s slow enough I can take off. I didn’t have much of a choice.”
He didn’t look all that upset, but he never smiled much either.
