He reached out again. “Would ye like me to repeat it in English?”
I laughed. “No. That’s okay.” I realized I’d just given up the chance to hold hands again. “I’m married.” I was horrified! The words just came out, when I’d only meant to remindmyselfthat I shouldn’t be enjoying some other man holding my hands! “I’m… I don’t know why I said that.”
His expression was unreadable. “Because ye’re marrit? Or because ye’re no’?”
“It’s…complicated.” I picked up my spoon and turned it back and forth. “I’m so glad we didn’t have to share a spoon.” Then I started eating to keep from rambling.
He forced a smile and had a taste. I waited for his surprise to register. And when it did, his eyebrows shot up, and he forgot all about my outburst while he devoured the soup, humming and nodding to let me know he liked it.
I ate half my bowl before I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. “I…I’m getting a divorce.”
He returned his spoon to his empty bowl and left it there, then he scowled at it for a minute before raising his eyes to mine. “It seems a divorce is not the disgraceful thing it once was.”
“Disgraceful? I guess that’s a pretty accurate way to describe how I felt about it, though. Definitely embarrassing. I was completely blindsided.”
Kee-un found my hand again. “Then it is yer husband who?—”
“Served me with papers? Yep. A couple of weeks ago, actually. No warning at all. I’m still in shock.”
“This is why ye went off on yer own, into the Cairngorms?”
He dipped up another bowlful of soup and while we finished eating, I explained just how I ended up alone in Scotland, but that I hadn’t been on some suicide mission to make Nick regret dumping me.
“Damn me, but I am glad of it,” he said.
“I’m sorry?”
“How else would I have had the chance tae taste…” His attention dropped to my lips. “Tae taste a soup sae fine?”
I felt my face heat, but I ignored it. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m going to have to find some other way to make a living.”
His big fist bounced on the table. “Say him nay, lass.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means deny him the prize. Fight.”
“No. I definitely don’t want to fight the divorce. I don’t want him back. I feel like I’ve been married to a stranger all this time.”
“Nay. Fight fer yerrestaurant.” He’d said it like the French do. “Never give up somethin’ ye love, Matty lass. Love is what makes it yers. And to surrender it is to insult the rest of us who have little to love.”
I sat there for a long time, letting his words sink in, letting them take root and spread through me like a tree, making me sit up straight.
“You know,” I finally said, “for the first time since I was served those papers, I just felt a little bubble of hope, a little spark of ambition. I worried I’d never feel them again.” I shook my head. “Not one friend suggested I fight. Not one! But then again, all my friends had already picked Nick’s side. If my dad were still alive, he would have kicked his ass…”
Kee-un grinned from across the table.
“What?”
“I would have liked yer fither, then.”
His nose was nearly back to normal, though I didn’t look too close. I was afraid to know if I’d screwed it up for good. And if it needed to be re-broken, it wouldn’t be me who did it.
“Daddy loved my cooking. My mom died when I was four, so I started cooking young, because he was so bad at it. You can only feed a child pigs-in-a-blanket so many nights a week.”
Kee-un looked horrified, and I laughed.
“Even if he’d been exaggerating, his praise was enough to make me want to be a professional.” I pushed the memories away, even less interested in examining the past than I was in examining Kee-un’s nose. “He died of kidney failure, but he lived long enough to see me openThe Last Chair.”
