Recipe for a Broken Heart

Chapter.2

Chapter 2 — The Suit in the Closet

Camille had exactly one interview outfit, and it had been hanging in the back of her closet for two years, still wrapped in the dry cleaner's plastic like it might lose its nerve if exposed to air too soon.

She pulled it out on Wednesday night, laid it across her bed, and stood there staring at it the way you'd stare at an old photograph — something familiar that still managed to catch you off guard. Navy blazer. Cream blouse. The kind of outfit that said I am capable and put-together and hopefully didn't say I make forty-two dollars a night in tips and I'm terrified.

"You're going to get it," her mother said from the doorway, arms crossed, wearing the expression she always wore when she'd decided something was true and dared the universe to argue with her.

"You don't know that."

"I do, actually. Mother's intuition. It's very reliable." She crossed the room and smoothed a wrinkle out of the blazer's shoulder that wasn't really there, just an excuse to touch it, to be part of the moment. "You were made for something bigger than that diner, baby. You always were."

Camille didn't answer right away. There was a version of herself, a long time ago, who would have agreed instantly, loudly, without a second thought. That version had graduated near the top of her class and had a five-year plan and genuinely believed effort was a currency that always, eventually, paid out. That version hadn't yet learned what it felt like to build a whole future around someone and watch him fold it up and hand it to someone else because her someone else had more money.

"I just don't want to get my hopes up," she said finally. "That's all."

Her mother's face softened in that particular way it did whenever David came up without either of them saying his name. "Hope isn't the enemy, Camille. He was."

"Ma."

"I'm just saying it. Somebody has to." She kissed the top of Camille's head, the way she'd done since Camille was small enough for it to require bending down instead of standing on her toes. "Get some sleep. Big day."

Sleep, as it turned out, had other plans. Camille lay in bed running through possible interview questions, rehearsing answers about her strengths and her five-year vision and why she wanted to work for a company she'd found through a job board at midnight out of sheer desperation, which was not, obviously, the version of the truth she planned on sharing.

She'd looked the company up, of course. Rousseau Industries — logistics and manufacturing, based in Lyon, expanding into North America. The Canadian branch was new, barely six months old, still finding its footing, which probably explained why they were hiring someone without five years of corporate experience already stapled to their resume. The website had a page with the leadership team's photos, all confident smiles and expensive-looking suits, except for one — a man listed as the branch's incoming operations director, no photo yet, just a name.

Étienne Rousseau.

Family business, apparently. She hadn't thought much of it beyond noting the name, filing it away as one more fact in the growing pile of things she needed to remember before Thursday morning. A boss's last name mattering less to her, in that moment, than whether she still owned a pair of pantyhose without a run in them.

Thursday morning arrived exactly the way Thursday mornings always did, without any regard for how much a person needed it to go well. Camille ironed her blouse twice. She practiced her handshake on the bathroom door handle, which made Marcus laugh so hard from the hallway that she nearly threw the iron at him.

"You look like you're about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court," he said, leaning in the doorway with a piece of toast hanging out of his mouth.

"I feel like I'm about to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court."

"You've got this. You're the smartest person I know. Present company excluded, obviously." He grinned, and she threw a balled-up sock at him, which he dodged with the reflexes of a man who'd grown up being her favorite target.

Her mother drove her partway, since the office was downtown and parking near it cost more than Camille's weekly grocery budget, and dropped her three blocks out with a squeeze of the hand and a whispered, "You've already survived worse than this."

Camille believed her. Mostly.

She walked the last three blocks slowly, deliberately, letting the cold air settle her nerves the way it always did, watching her breath fog in front of her, rehearsing her opening line one more time. The building, when she reached it, was newer than she expected — glass and steel, still had that faint construction smell clinging to the lobby, a company literally still finding its shape.

The receptionist directed her to the fourth floor, and Camille rode up in an elevator that smelled like fresh paint, checking her reflection in the polished doors, smoothing her hair, reminding herself that she had survived a broken engagement, two years of exhausting shifts, and her little brother's cooking experiments. A job interview was nothing. A job interview was just words in a room.

The doors opened onto a floor that still had a few unpacked boxes stacked against one wall, desks not yet fully arranged, the particular chaos of a company mid-move. A woman at the front desk smiled at her.

"Camille Bennett? For the ten o'clock?"

"That's me."

"Great, he's just finishing up another call. Have a seat, it shouldn't be long."

Camille sat, smoothed her skirt, folded her hands in her lap, and tried very hard not to think about how much rode on the next hour — not just for her, but for her mother's shoulders, which had carried too much for too long, and for Marcus's shoes, and for the quiet, stubborn hope she'd tried so hard not to let herself feel and had, apparently, failed to kill entirely.

A door down the hall opened. A voice, low, accented, carrying the particular cadence of someone who thought in French and spoke in English, said something to someone unseen — brief, clipped, clearly wrapping up a call.

Camille glanced up out of habit more than curiosity.

And that was the first time she saw him.