“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now eat. You’re too skinny when you get nervous, and your mama says you’ve been picking at toast like a bird.”
Ellis laughed into his cup. Anika rubbed her temples. The chicken tasted like Sunday even though it was Thursday, which was Miss Odette’s particular magic.
After Delia went to rinse dishes, Miss Odette lowered her voice. “That chef’s offer. Saturday tasting. What’s your fear?”
“That they want a mascot,” Anika said immediately. “That Delia becomes a story they tell to sell reservations. That she gets hurt. That she starts thinking her worth is applause from men in white coats.”
“And your hope?” Ellis asked.
Anika hesitated. “That she gets to learn in a real room with someone who knows more than we do about restaurant technique. That she isn’t punished for being sharp. That we can say yes to learning and no to spectacle.”
Miss Odette pointed her fork. “Then you write the rules before they do. You go Saturday only if Patricia puts it in writing: education hour, guardian present, no photography, no press, no ‘junior chef’ nicknames, stove access limited, and Delia can walk out mid-shallot if she wants. If they balk, you have your answer. If they agree, you still can say no after you sleep on it.”
Anika stared at her mother-in-law—Miss Odette was Ellis’s mother, fierce as pepper—and felt some of the panic organize into a checklist. Checklists she could survive.
Friday at Emberwick, Rainer Holst arrived earlier than usual. He walked the walk-in, checked the fish, rewrote a special that had been boring him for a week, and found himself looking at the empty pan on the rack as if it might speak. He disliked sentimentality. He disliked the industry’s hunger for prodigies even more, having watched two young cooks in his thirties burn out under praise that arrived before stamina. Delia was not a young cook. She was a child. The distinction mattered, and he was annoyed at himself for needing Carmen to underline it the night of the incident.
Carmen found him by the dry storage. “You’re brooding.”
“I’m inventorying,” Rainer said.
“Same thing on you.” She crossed her arms. “If the family says yes to Saturday, you teach. You don’t perform. You don’t test her like a game show. And if she freezes, you let her freeze without making it a referendum on her whole self.”
“I am not a monster.”
“No,” Carmen said. “You’re a chef. Overlap exists.”
Theo, passing with a case of citrus, added, “For what it’s worth, Chef, she didn’t smirk when she was right. That’s the part that got me. Kids who want attention smirk. She just… wanted the sauce fixed.”