Family Kitchen Box Set

Chapter 2

Chapter 2Del’s phone rang just as he was distracted with trying to remember if he’d already added salt to his sashimi tuna or not. He couldn’t oversalt it, because it would taste horrible and the cucumber on the plate would get soggy. His aim was to perfect this recipe to figure out if it would go into the book, but he just wasn’t sure if he even liked tuna enough—the shrill sound pierced the otherwise quiet kitchen again.

“s**t!” Del hissed and quickly ground some sea salt on top of the delicate pieces of fish.

He slammed down the salt grinder and looked around the kitchen to locate the noise. He managed to find his cell phone under a stack of papers on the counter and grimaced when he had to swipe twice to get the thing to work. Tuna fingers, ugh.

“What?” he barked into the phone, propping it between his shoulder and ear as he moved to the sink to wash his hands.

“Calm down, Delly, geez!”

Del grimaced. “Sorry, sis, you caught me mid-cooking.”

“Apology accepted. Now sit your ass down, I have some interesting news.” Bernice sounded almost gleeful, which immediately perked Del’s interest.

He dried his hands quickly and took the closest seat—an old dining chair by the island. “Oh?”

“Guess who called me tonight?” Before he could answer, she cackled and said, “One Clyde Harding.”

Del’s jaw dropped. What the f**k did his treacherous asshat of an ex-husband want from his sister?

“What the f**k, Bernie? What—”

“Oh, it gets gooood, brother mine,” she almost-purred. “He wanted to ask if I could sell him the recipe for the Stew.”

Mind blown. That’s what Bernie’s daughter Abigail would’ve said. That one gif she’d sent him with the guy and the explosions flashed through Del’s brain.

“He what?”

“The call started all nice and cordial, which already was weird as f**k. I mean that fucker knows exactly what I think of him and—you know what, that’s not important here.” She took in a deep breath, and Del smiled a little. Bernie had always had their mom’s Irish temper and it had taken her forty years to figure out how to de-escalate her own temper. Boy was Del happy about it now.

“Okay, he calls to kiss ass and then…?” he prompted, pulling her back on track.

“Then he leads the conversation, such as it was, to the restaurant and how diners were displeased about not having the Stew anymore and maybe there was a way for him to get the recipe and how he’d be happy to pay big money for it.”

The longer she spoke, the tighter Del’s fingers had wrapped around the edge of the island. He consciously unclenched them and shook the hand to get his circulation going again.

“What did you tell him?”

“That the Stew wasn’t actually my recipe, or even our grandma’s like he thinks it is. I told him the truth; that it was a family recipe, but my brilliant chef brother tinkered with it for a decade to make it what it is today, and that he could go f**k himself with a hot pitchfork.”

Del wiped his eyes, not even surprised when his hand became wet from his tears.

Anything to do with his ex-husband, Clyde, made him pissed off and suspicious in equal measure these days. It had been a year since the divorce was finalized and he was finally free of the bastard, but he still expected a knife in his back whenever Clyde was mentioned. For a good reason, of course, but the fact that his brain had gone there even for a second when it came to Bernie…

“Hey, I know,” she whispered down the line.

Del chuckled wetly. It was true that nobody knew the recipe but him. The Stew was his, despite the meager start as a family favorite when their maternal grandmother had come over from Ireland as a young wife.

He still hated that his mind was now suspicious enough to think that somehow his sister would betray him. It wasn’t going to happen, ever, even if she’d known the recipe.

“He got a bit pissed off, you know?” And there was that gleeful tone again.

“Oh?” Del reached over to grab a piece of kitchen towel from the roll on the other side of the island.

“Yeah, but he couldn’t really get any real momentum going before I hung up on him. But I think it’s safe to say they haven’t been able to come close to your recipe and the restaurant is starting to fail.”

Part of Del loved that news, not that it was news to him, really. He still had people in there who kept him posted, even after a year and a half from his departure. But the restaurant Clyde had bought for him as an engagement present a decade ago had still been Del’s baby.

As the head chef of Trim—named after the town in Ireland where his grandma had been born—he’d been able to mold it into whatever he’d wanted. He’d ended up with a very successful Irish-French fusion with guest chefs who had brought their own flavors into play.

“It’s bittersweet,” Del finally said, after blowing his nose. “Trim was…”

“Yeah, I know Delly.” And she did know, she’d been part of the process when he’d been figuring out the menu, digging archives and family cookbooks for things he might’ve missed in the first ten times he’d done it over the years.

Del cleared his throat. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll give Paul a call, let him know Clyde is poaching.”

“All right. You hang in there, Del. Love you.”

“Love you too. Tell the family I said hi.”

They ended the call and Del got up to get himself a glass of lime-mint water from the fridge. He didn’t drink these days, but he’d once loved mojitos and well, sometimes it was all about the little pleasures.

He wandered to his office in the back of the house with his drink and cell phone, and sat down heavily. He felt old suddenly. Instead of dwelling on it, he called his lawyer.

Paul Winters answered almost immediately. “Del, hi.”

“Hey, Paul. Guess what?”

“What did Clyde do now?” Paul’s tone went into the pissed off rumble it always would. Neither of them had had the most positive experience with Clyde during the divorce proceedings.

“He called Bernice and tried to buy the Stew recipe,” Del replied calmly, then pulled the phone away from his ear to let Paul cuss out a storm in peace and without damage to Del’s own ear drums.

“But she doesn’t even have it!” Paul scoffed. “Did he actually offer her money?”

“I think it was heavily implied. He knows he can’t actually offer to buy anything from anyone in my family, so…you know.” Clyde was rich as f**k, but he wasn’t stupid.

“All right. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll make a note of it, in case we need this later, but let’s hope he gives up.”

“Trim isn’t doing so well,” Del said quietly.

Paul knew what Trim had meant to him. The fact that Del was sitting in the old house was a testament to that. He’d used all his savings to hire Paul so he knew Clyde would pay every cent for Del’s half of the restaurant. Well, that, and to make sure the divorce ran as smoothly as it could.

Once Del had gotten the money from Trim, he’d been pretty much set for a new life, but instead, he’d run back into his grandma’s house in bumfuck Oregon. He’d needed the comfort, and somehow, he was there still, a year later.

“So I’ve understood. You know that’s not on him and the people who matter know it too, right?” Paul sighed. “Look, Del, I might’ve never told this to you before, but I might as well now: Trim isn’t your legacy.”

Del blinked, not sure what to make of the statement.

Paul continued before he could gather enough words together for a sentence. “I don’t know if the cookbook is, either, but it’s a start of building something new. Maybe you’ll never own another restaurant, but you sure can run one. But first, you need to figure out what you really want out of life.”

“Yeah,” Del replied in lieu of saying anything intelligent. It smarted to hear the words from Paul who had become a trusted friend in the couple of years they’d known each other.

“Look, I got to go, I’m prepping yet another divorce settlement, but call me if you need me, okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Bye, Paul.” Del disconnected the call and put the cell on his messy desk.

* * * *

Del had met Clyde when he was twenty-five and working at a restaurant in Sacramento. Clyde had been everything Del wasn’t; self-assured, from old money, and college educated. He’d also been ten years older than Del, and a friend of the restaurant’s owner, Tony.

Del had been flattered with the attention Clyde gave him. The special thanks sent to the kitchen, the times he tried to chat Del up when their paths crossed in Tony’s office. Then eventually, he’d been waiting for Del out the back when he got off shift, and…well, the rest was history.

Del’s parents had been delighted that he’d met someone so sophisticated as Clyde, and when they got engaged couple of years later and married the next summer, well, they’d been so happy.

When Clyde gifted him a half of a really nice restaurant in San Francisco and told him to go wild with it, Del ran with the idea. Clyde was happy in the office or wining and dining potential suppliers of rare, top quality goods.

Clyde had been the front of the operation, and Del had been happy in the kitchen, running a tight ship. Sadly, after more than six years of marriage, Del realized Clyde was cheating. The fact that he’d chosen Trim’s business manager, Diana, to do it with was a whole other can of worms.

Del got up and left his cell behind. He sipped at his water as he meandered over to the kitchen. It was the only part of the old house he’d actually properly renovated when he moved about a year ago. There were all sorts of kitchen gadgets around, from a pressure cooker to a sous vide immersion circulator to a tabletop BBQ smoker in the corner of the counter.

There was a whole pantry full of other things, anything he could want while trying to write his f*****g impossible cookbook.

That reminded him. “s**t, s**t, s**t, s**t!” He went to the plate of sashimi and saw the cucumber in the salad had started to weep and now the tuna sat in a puddle. “For f**k’s sake!”

He grabbed the plate and scraped everything into the trash. Then he cleaned the counters, and took the most delicate items he needed to handwash to the sink.

There were lights on at the O’Dwyer house past his backyard and the gully. He wondered idly what was going on there. A few days ago, he’d seen flashing lights headed to the O’Dwyers’. It wasn’t the first or the last time, not with how the sketchy people in town seemed to congregate there sometimes.

The last six months had been more active in that regard. It was hard not to notice when the only way to the O’Dwyers’ was the same road Del’s house was on.

There were kids there, which worried Del sometimes. They weren’t that old, although his mother had said something about an older boy that had left years ago.

Sighing, Del rinsed the dishes and dried them. It wasn’t his problem, those children. That was what their mother and the CPS were for.

He should’ve fixed himself something to eat for dinner, but he didn’t feel like it. Part of him wanted to start a big pot of the Stew out of spite, but he didn’t have any Guinness in the fridge. It wasn’t Stew without Guinness.

Instead of cooking, he wandered over to his living room and plopped down on the couch. There wouldn’t be anything on TV, but suddenly the silence of the big old house felt too much, so he turned it on anyways.

* * * *

A few years into their marriage, Del had said he wanted kids, eventually. Clyde had laughed it off, saying Del already had Trim, and that Clyde himself wasn’t father material.

Then, about two years ago, Del had brought it up again. He was ready to have someone else run his kitchen and settle down, make a family. He wanted to adopt, knowing that there were a lot of kids in the system that needed families.

Clyde had told him that he wasn’t going to take on anyone else’s children, and that he didn’t want kids, anyway. Then, in another sentence, he’d added that he thought they should open up their marriage, because he didn’t feel fulfilled with Del’s long days in the kitchen.

The next day, their hostess, Jamila, had come to Del and told him she couldn’t hold it in anymore, she just had to tell Del what was going on behind Del’s back between Clyde and Diana.

Everyone had known, except Del. It had gone on for almost a year at that point. Right under his nose, his husband he loved dearly, who he considered love of his life, was f*****g their financial manager and friend.

Del’s world had shattered into pieces. He’d fallen into a pit of despair and depression and only the fact that he’d immediately had a place to hide had helped with that and prevented him from digging that hole deeper.

At first, he’d gone to stay at a hotel with Clyde’s money. He’d made sure Trim would run until he got his life back in order. He managed to hold on to his wits and his sanity with the help of Paul, but once the divorce was final, he escaped to Enterprise, because that’s where he’d felt safe as a kid.

The house was his grandparents’ place, originally. The thought of that his Irish grandma, Nanna, had cooked her version of the Guinness stew in this very kitchen decades ago made something in him settle. His mom had grown up in this house, along with her six siblings.

Del’s childhood home was on the other side of town, in a slightly nicer neighborhood, but since his parents had moved to Colorado to be closer to Bernie’s family, they’d sold their house and Del had bought Nanna’s house for safekeeping.

From the moment he got the final paperwork for the divorce, it took Del three days to walk up the stairs of Nanna’s house and start fresh. Bernie and Abigail had come to help him out with making the house livable.

After staying there for a year, it was looking lived-in and cozy, and—if Del was honest with himself—a little rundown in a few places. He didn’t have the energy for the upkeep for an old, sprawling 3,000-square-foot house. He needed to hire someone, but somehow, he hadn’t.

He told himself that he was focusing on the cookbook right now, but that wasn’t exactly true. He still felt unanchored after leaving Clyde and Trim behind, like he was just drifting through life.

Paul’s words rang in his mind. What did he really want from life?

Right now, he didn’t know, so he soldiered on, trying to come up with new ways to spin some old recipes for fine dining food that could be made at home. Trim had been a success because of him. Hell, just before he’d left, there had been murmurings of a Michelin star in the imminent future.

The thought of returning to a restaurant kitchen seemed daunting at the moment. Especially if he wasn’t the owner of the said kitchen. He hadn’t worked for someone else in a decade.

He’d had a short-lived cooking show on cable too, a handful of years ago. That had been fun, sort of, even though he’d hated being directed and how it all was about the “right angles” and how he looked. Maybe that had come through, the way he didn’t like that the producer had wanted to concentrate on him more, and that was why they’d axed the show after ten episodes.

The cookbook had been Bernie’s idea. She loved celebrity chef cookbooks, and when Del had asked Paul to help out, he’d found a great potential publisher that was very interested. Del just had to find it in himself to write the f*****g book first, though, and he wasn’t…inspired.

* * * *

Del fell asleep on the couch. His body was long ago used to not being nourished the ways he should’ve been. He’d lived too long on whatever he tasted as he cooked and scraps from this or that.

Not eating caught up with him when he jolted awake at the pounding on his door some hours later. The TV was on low, but the wailing sound of a baby would’ve pierced a higher volume for sure, based on how efficiently it cut through the heavy wood of Del’s front door.

He got to his feet, instinctively alarmed, and then swayed wildly when his low blood sugar caught up with him. “Whoa…” He managed to make it to the door, his brain still scrambling on to what might be going on. When he opened the door, he suddenly had his arms full of a wailing baby.

He stared in confusion at the scene in front of him. Two more little kids and a young man that all but collapsed on his porch, pleading for help and apologizing in a tone that could only be described as defeated.

“Okay,” Del said, automatically feeling the toddler’s forehead which was burning up. “All right, it seems like we have an emergency here.”

He turned and walked into the house, calling after his shoulder. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?” he asked as he looked around for his car keys. The baby was hot enough for it to be alarming, and he needed to get her into a car and to the hospital as soon as possible.

“The baby’s sick and Justin’s piece of s**t car didn’t start,” the oldest of the little ones, a girl with horribly unkempt natural hair said in a tone that was surprisingly aggressive for a kid.

“All right. You’re—” He thought for a while but couldn’t remember the name of their mother, so he went with “The O’Dwyer kids, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m Del. What are all your names?” he asked as he maneuvered on his shoes while holding the baby.

“I’m Harper, that’s Wyatt, and the baby’s Scarlett.”

“And Justin is your big brother?” Del guessed, making Harper nod solemnly. “Okay. Let’s get my car, it’s in the garage.”

Harper grabbed the little boy’s hand and kicked Justin’s sneaker pointedly.

Del didn’t stop to wait and see if Justin could collect himself enough to get up. Instead, he took the lead and hoped everyone would follow, because now Scarlett had gone quiet, and that wasn’t a good sign at all.