Amy had made their mother a necklace, a sand dollar and some beads threaded on a silk cord. Beth’s gift was a pair of ceramic salt and pepper shakers shaped like bluebirds.
“Beautiful,” their mother said.
Beth blushed. “It’s not much.”
None of their presents were expensive or grand. But Momma actedas if they’d showered her with the contents of the jewelry counter at Belk department store. She touched and exclaimed over each gift, offering hugs and praise as the younger girls perched on the arms of her chair. Meg’s face was wreathed in smiles. Jo’s eyes were wet. The music wrapped them in ribbons of sound.
O holy night, the stars are brightly shining...
Jo sniffled happily. Finally, it felt likeChristmas.
CHAPTER 1
Jo
Our mother taught us girls if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. But Momma wasn’t trying to make it as a food blogger in New York City.
Negative reviews got a lot more clicks than positive ones. And I still had three hundred more words to write today.
A distant burst of car horns drifted up the fire escape to my apartment, the rush of traffic like the city breathing. I tightened my ponytail. Typed:The food at Earl’s Eats in the East Village is not your momma’s cooking. And not in a good way. Neither original nor authentic, the stereotypical menu clings to cliché without delivering either the heart or soul of true Southern home cooking.
My phone chirped on the table beside me. Did I have a blog comment?
Nope. A phone call.
“Hey, Jo. Whatcha doing?”
I smiled at the sound of my sister’s voice. In the last few weeks, my circle had shattered. The friends I laughed and bickered and shared everything with had moved away. My roommate Ashmeeta hadfollowed a job to Boston. My pal Rachel had followed a boyfriend to Portland. But I could always count on Meg.
“Working.”
“I thought you were off today,” Meg said.
A siren whooped in the distance. “From the restaurant, yeah. I’m writing.”
“Oh, your blog.” I could hear one of the twins—two-year-old Daisy, or maybe that was DJ—chanting in the background:“Mommy. Ma. Mamamama.”“How’s it going?”
I smiled. “Good.”
Okay, notJulie & JuliaorSmitten Kitchengood. Mine was not a success story. Or an interesting story of failure, like the gritty novels admired by my faculty advisor, where the small-town girl falls into a life of drugs and prostitution. Or even a Hallmark screenplay, where the heroine goes home to embrace her small-town roots and marry her high school sweetheart, finding love and purpose along the way. There was no big book advance, no movie deal, no guest appearance on the Food Network in my immediate future. Nope. The blog was more a fallback position than the fulfillment of my Life Plan. But I was slowly picking up readers. Instagram followers. E-mail subscribers. Even a few advertisers, which helped pay the rent since I’d been laid off from the newspaper.“Last hired, first fired,”my editor had explained regretfully when he let me go.
My dismissal had come as a shock. Yeah, yeah, I knew all about the dismal decline of print journalism. But I was supposed to be the smart one. The successful one. Certainly back when I wrote the school play and edited the school paper, graduating summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina and earning an MFA from NYU, I never imagined a future as an anonymous food blogger.
But I was determined to make this work. I earned a little money as a prep cook. The experience—and the insider’s view of a top restaurant kitchen—were great. I hadn’t given up my dream, I explained to my father on my last visit home. After all, I was stillwriting, getting comments (reader feedback!) on a daily basis. The book deal would come.After, you know, I scraped together a book. I just had to survive until then.
“I tested a new recipe yesterday,” I said. “For mac and cheese. Did you see it?”
“On your blog?”
“Yeah.”
“No. I mean, not yet. Sorry,” Meg said. “No, Daisy, that’s DJ’s cup.Thisis your cup.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“It’s just I’ve been so busy with the twins...”
“I understand,” I said.
