She shook her head.
“Then today’s your lucky day.” I grabbed a bowl and some eggs. “First rule of cooking—always crack youreggs on a flat surface, not the edge of the bowl. You get fewer shell pieces that way.”
I demonstrated, and she watched carefully. Then I handed her an egg. “You try.”
She cracked it—a little messily, but not bad for a first attempt.
“Good. Now we whisk.” I handed her a fork. “You want to break up the yolks completely. See how it’s all turning yellow?”
She nodded, concentrating hard on the task. Her hands were steadier now that she could focus on something she could actually control.
This was definitely not the kind of cooking lesson I usually gave, but it was serving the purpose of distracting her.
I got a pan heating on the stove, added a pat of butter. “Watch it melt. See how it foams? That’s when you know it’s ready.”
“Okay,” she said quietly.
“Now we pour in the eggs. And this is the important part—you don’t just let them sit there. You have to keep moving them around.” I handed her a spatula. “Gentle. You’re not beating them up. You’re coaxing them.”
She started pushing the eggs around the pan, and I guided her hand when she went too fast.
That’s when I felt eyes on me.
I looked up and saw Zoe and Mrs. Martin standingin the doorway. Zoe had her arm around Mrs. Martin’s shoulders, the older woman watching her daughter with fondness. And Zoe watching me.
Something shifted in my chest.
I was in my element here. This was what I was good at—creating, teaching, nurturing through food. But it felt different with Zoe watching. Like this was the first time she was actually seeingme.
Not the jerk who’d been cruel to her at the beginning. Not the guy who’d been teasing her, giving her orders, getting her worked up and excited these past few nights. But who I was when I didn’t constantly have to prove myself.
“Almost done,” I told Emma. “See how they’re just barely set? That’s perfect. Take them off the heat.”
She did as I hovered nearby, waiting to spring into action if she seemed in danger of getting burned. Then I showed her how to plate them and added some toast I’d made while she wasn’t looking, with a little fruit on the side.
“You made that,” I told her. “All by yourself.”
She smiled for the first time since we’d come downstairs.
We brought the food back out to the table.I grabbed a few other things from the kitchen—some cheese, crackers, and a carafe of juice—and set it all out. No one was eating much except Emma, who dug into her eggs with surprising enthusiasm. But I saw Zoe reach out and take Mrs. Martin’s hand again, just holding it as the woman cried quietly.
I talked to Emma, asking her about school, about what she wanted to be when she grew up, not wanting her to notice her mother’s tears.
“A doctor,” she said at the end of a long list of other careers. “Or maybe a chef.”
“Yeah? Well, you’ve got a good start on that last one.”
She smiled again, a little wider this time.
We sat with Emma and her mother for another twenty minutes until someone burst through the restaurant doors.
It was Dennis. His face was flushed, his eyes bright. “They’ve found them,” he said, looking at all of us. “They’re on their way back.”
There were four gasps, and then none of us dared breathe until we knew for sure.
“All of them?” I couldn’t keep the urgency out of my voice. “They’re all okay?”
Dennis smiled. “It sounds like it. A little banged up, but they’ll be all right.”
