It takes about an hour to get them up to speed on everything. My mother; my terrible biological father, whom I don’t want to talk about. And then my dad and what it all means.
“How do you feel about it now?” Ginny asks with a wide, uncomfortable grimace on her face.
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
I watch Kate and Ginny catch each other’s eye.
“How did you leave it?” Kate asks.
“We hugged,” I say, shrugging. “I was mostly in shock, I think. I felt angry for a while after I left. But I also get it. I get how the lie happened and how there was never a good time to reveal the truth.”
“A mistake, but one you can forgive?” Kate asks, and I nod.
“I think so,” I say with a shrug. “I try to work out his thinking. It’s like he begged my mum,Please don’t take my daughter, and then kind of let me go anyway?”
“It was almost certainly both of you pulling back for different reasons,” Kate says quickly. “You pushed your dad away, and he felt some conflict in chasing you too much.Of course he did, Olive. How could he force a father-daughter relationship on you with such a burden of a lie? He probably felt he couldn’t make demands on you. He didn’t have the right to grab you by the ear and make you come back to the kitchen and go to culinary school or whatever.”
I nod. Kate is always right. Even if she is serving it a little hot today.
“I’m sure he was carrying plenty of his own guilt, Olive,” says Kate.
“I want to speak to him,” I say, my voice a little shaky again. “Like one last time. I hate that I will never have all the answers.”
“Did you try—”
“The empty chair? Yes. And no, I’m not trying that again,” I say, chuckling now, as I wipe away the snot trickling down my face. “I must look like shit, my god.”
“Actually, I think all the crying has given you a nice glow,” says Ginny, leaning forward to touch my arm. “You’d pay a lot at Charlotte Tilbury for that dewy pink.”
“What about the restaurant?” Kate says. “What will you do about Nicky’s?”
“Well. As you know I originally wanted to sell it, to give Mum back some money, but then I’m there at her house in the country and her happy, settled life with George,” I say dreamily. “She’s happy now. Really happy. George is lovely with his bees and she says she doesn’t need it.”
“I bet she could use it,” Ginny says.
“She doesn’t want Olive to give it to her,” Kate says, frowning at Ginny.
“It feels like it isn’t this big thing I need to make right anymore,” I say.“Two things I do know. One: I can’t change the past. I need to find peace with her mistakes. And two: I want to keep Nicky’s.”
“Aghhhhh,” says Ginny, pretending to faint dramatically. “Thank god.”
Kate raises an eyebrow, her reaction more subdued.
“Because of Leo?”
“No,” I say. “Because I’ll always regret not trying.”
“Do you want to run a restaurant?”
I think of Rocco and Isabella. I think about the early days of Nicky’s—me and my father and our mismatched tortellini. I think of my mother, who never wanted to do it but gave it everything she had until she had no more.
She and I are different. Because I want this. I’ve always wanted this.
And Leo and Dad are different because, well, they’re different.
“I want to try,” I say, nodding. “I want to give it a go with all that I know and all that Leo knows, and if it doesn’t work, we just pull out. Both of us have money coming in for the cookbook, and Leo can maybe put some of his toward a few small renovations so he has a stake in the place too. And, Ginny, maybe you could help with some ideas for that?”
“My dream job,” she says, grinning. “And what about your feelings about Leo?” Ginny adds quickly.
