“Yes,” Delia said seriously. “Tell them I’m boring.”
Priya did her best. Rumors were weeds. They didn’t die in a day. But they also didn’t find sunlight in every mouth; most kids preferred tetherball drama to emulsion gossip. By Wednesday the Jordan thing had mostly become a joke about Delia’s “fancy nose,” which she could live with because it was dumb and small and not a press cycle.
At Emberwick, the adult rumor had harder currency. Patricia fielded one more newsletter inquiry and killed it. A supplier joked with Rainer about hiring “short help,” and Rainer’s stare could have pasteurized milk. The supplier apologized. Carmen reported that a bartender from two doors down had asked questions; she had answered with a wall.
Still, Anika felt the pressure like weather under her skin. Not fame, exactly—Emberwick was respected, not celebrity—but the industry’s love of a sharp anecdote, the way a child’s correctness could become a coin passed across bars. She and Ellis sat after Delia’s bedtime on Wednesday and reviewed the week.
“She slept fine after bowling,” Ellis said. “She did homework. She seems… steadier, not spun out.”
“She got teased once,” Anika said. “She hated the word famous.”
“Good hate,” Ellis said. “Do we want a second Saturday?”
Anika rubbed her face. “I want her to learn. I don’t want a sequence that becomes an unofficial apprenticeship while she’s in fifth grade. Rainer’s respect is real. It’s also incomplete. He still sees her through the lens of his kitchen’s needs—curiosity, standards, maybe a little redemption for how he spoke to her. I need him to see her school nights and her braids getting redone and her being eleven.”
Ellis nodded. “So we hold the next date open without booking it. We tell them we’re thinking through October. We watch Delia. We don’t let urgency belonging to adults become urgency belonging to her.”
“Yes,” Anika said. “Held open. Not accepted as a path.”
Thursday evening, Rainer called Anika—not Patricia as go-between, Rainer himself, which Anika respected and also flagged.
“I’ve written a short technique note for Delia,” he said. “On paper. No logo. Carmen checked it for tone. It’s about heat and fat. She can ignore it. I can give it to you Saturday if you come to pick up your paycheck, or I can throw it away.”
Anika stared at the dark window of the apartment. “Mail it to me at the restaurant. I’ll decide whether she reads it. And Rainer—about another session. We’re not confirming next Saturday. We’re not rejecting forever. Delia has school, a science lunch club starting, and a life that isn’t your line. If we do anything again, it will be after we’ve watched how this week settles. Maybe the Saturday after next. Maybe not.”
Silence, then: “Understood. Incomplete answers are still answers.”
“Also,” Anika added, “if anyone asks you to comment on her, the answer is no.”
“I’ve already said no,” Rainer said. “I’ll keep saying no.”