Her expression softens some more. “I get it. More than you think. I don’t even have social media. Can’t be bothered. My sister lives on Instagram, but me? No thanks. I don’t want strangers dissecting my life. So…I can’t even imagine how hard this is for you. And your son. Is he alright?”
Relief unfurls in me, a strange experience with a woman. It’s fragile and warm.
“Yes, he is…now.”
“Was he against the divorce?” she asks as she rises.
I get up, as well, surprised.Is she asking me to leave?
“No. He was…happy about it. Simone and I fought a lot.”
She stops and grins. “You know what Dr. Phil says?”
“I don’t even know who Dr. Phil is.”
She chuckles, and I’m obsessed with how her facelights up when she does. I want this woman to be smiling and happy all the time.
“He’s a TV psychologist who is full of BS, but he did say one thing that stayed with me. It’s better to be from a broken home than to live within one.”
On point!
“Gustave, I’m so sorry, but I need to eat something. I’m starving.” There is a whine in her voice. She reallyishungry. I feel remorse immediately. She only just got home from work.
“I…can…we can….” I can’t invite her for dinner…or maybe I can. It’s not like I’m freaking Tom Cruise, and the paps are following me around. But if someone I know, and I know a hell of a lot of people in Paris, sees me with her….
“I only have to reheat some food. I cooked last night, and you know what they say?Chili con carnetastes better the next day. You want to eat with me?”
I should say no. I should leave. I shouldn’t stay. She’s literally under my aegis. I pay for her, and this is all kinds of risky.
“I’d love to,” I say instead.
The scent ofchili con carnefills the little apartment as she warms it on the stove. Not French, not refined, not what the chefs at my clubs will serve—and yet it makes my mouth water.
Her kitchen is small but efficient, the kind of place where every pan has its designated hook, and every knife its designated slot.
I pick up one of the knives. Japanese. Expensive.
“My father insisted I bring my own knives to Paris.” She smiles fondly. “And he packed every dried chili known to mankind.” She opens a cabinet, and indeed, there are more chilis here than I’ve ever seen before in my life. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get through customs.”
A bowl of limes sits on the counter beside a bunch of cilantro in a glass of water.
She moves with an easy rhythm, the kind born of habit, of love. The way she chops, stirs, and plates feels like second nature—efficient, unselfconscious, alive.
She pulls a stack of tortillas from the fridge.
“Are those homemade?” I ask.
She wrinkles her nose, amused. “Are there any other kind?”
Her answer makes me smile. I grew up in a house where no one would’ve known which side of a spatula was up. My mother, like Simone, viewed kitchens as something to pass through on the way to the dining room—not a place to linger. Meals appeared as if conjured by magic, presented under silver domes by men in starched white jackets.
Simone inherited that same brand of refinement—elegance so brittle it cracks under the weight of real life. Cooking, to her, was what servants did, never something you did for love.
Even now, in Pommard, my refuge from the world, there’s still someone to prepare my meals. Thehousekeeper leaves casseroles in the oven and soup simmering on the stove, before disappearing back to her family in the village. I’ve never had to lift a pan in my life.
And yet here, watching Tara move through this kitchen—hair loose, sleeves rolled up, the air rich with the aroma of onions and cilantro—I feel something I’ve never felt in any of my polished dining rooms.
Warmth.
