Ah, we are so close. But even this—almost bigamy, French chef fraud, all of it—is not the scandal that made me the most talked-about woman west of the Mississippi.
Besides, if I made a scene, ran straight into the square to announce what Ealy had done, what would I have won?
Ealy?
A man who had to be threatened with bodily harm even to greet me at the train station? Who couldn’t tell abonjourfrom abonsoir? I’m not sure I’m motivated by that prize anymore.
And so I smiled. Sweetly. Magnanimously. And let the moment pass.
Bertha blinked once, slowly. She understood.
Ealy, of course, beamed. “See? The real thang,” he said, smiling that piano-key smile. And I—Caroline Bliguet, Spelman graduate, daughter of a seamstress turned shopkeeper, orchestrator of the Great Sandwich Heist of 1893—stood there in that gown, in that polished house, and knew I had come all this way for nothing.
ELLE
I went to visit Lessie and Freddie the very next day at the boardinghouse.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, skipping pleasantries entirely.
Lessie looked left, then right, as though checking for exits.
“Tell you what?” she asked, stalling so poorly I almost respected it.
“You are thethirdwife,” I said. “The business lady. I found it curious that you seemed to have no plan and no destination. I have never met an entrepreneur without a plan.”
“Oh, come on, Caroline,” she sighed.
“I’m serious.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly running an honest scheme,” she said, folding a napkin too many times. “You saw the condition I was in. I couldn’t let Major know before I got here, and everywhere you were, there was Major, so we never got around to talking honest. If he knew I was L. Mae andthispregnant, he’d have turned me around in Baton Rouge.”
She pulled her shoulders back like a woman bracing for wind.
“And I can’t go back to what I left, Caroline. I won’t.”
I knew that look. I’d worn that look.
“Did youeverplan on marrying him?” I asked softly.
She looked down at the floor like it might have answers.
“I don’t plan on marrying ever again,” she said, sliding threemismatched plates in my direction. “Taste these. I could really do something here. It wasn’t for nothing.” She gestured to me. “The trip. Got a trial here as a cook. Not many kids in the place, so the owner don’t mind Freddie.”
Of course he didn’t. The baby was turning into quite the charming little butterball, full of grabby hands, wet giggles, and the kind of noisy joy that demanded to be shared.
The boardinghouse was loud and drafty, the table wobbled, and one of the chairs was standing only out of habit, but it waswarm. It was honest. Sitting in that cramped kitchen, elbow to elbow over chipped plates, eating food that came from somebody’s grandmother instead of a French pamphlet, I felt something I hadn’t let myself feel in weeks.
Something dangerously close to home.
I thought of my sister. Of the yawning distance between us.
Since the boardinghouse doubled as the town’s postal hub (and also the candy counter, and also a place to buy secondhand hats), I sat down and wrote my sister a letter—the first one in weeks.
I wrote about the train ride. About roast beef sandwiches and delivering a baby in a run-down fort. About a grand marble house with a soul like a mausoleum, and a fake French chef named Bertha and the real chef Lessie, who had left me to my writing to take more orders. I was surprised at the wetness on my cheek as I folded the papers. So much had happened to me.
I kept making my way through samples of Lessie’s grandmother’s dishes, and each was better than the last, including an étouffée so good it had made me stand up and praise the Lord. I called Lessie back over to the bar.
“The owner’s going to be begging you to stay,” I told her.“Make him set aside space for individual goods. Handheld things, like this chicken pie.” I pointed with my fork. “People will pay good money for food they can eat without a knife and fork.”
