Family Recipe

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

Del’s phone rang just as he was distracted with trying to remember if he’d already added salt to his sashimi tuna or not. He couldn’t oversalt it, because it would taste horrible and the cucumber on the plate would get soggy. His aim was to perfect this recipe to figure out if it would go into the book, but he just wasn’t sure if he even liked tuna enough—the shrill sound pierced the otherwise quiet kitchen again.

“s**t!” Del hissed and quickly ground some sea salt on top of the delicate pieces of fish.

He slammed down the salt grinder and looked around the kitchen to locate the noise. He managed to find his cell phone under a stack of papers on the counter and grimaced when he had to swipe twice to get the thing to work. Tuna fingers, ugh.

“What?” he barked into the phone, propping it between his shoulder and ear as he moved to the sink to wash his hands.

“Calm down, Delly, geez!”

Del grimaced. “Sorry, sis, you caught me mid-cooking.”

“Apology accepted. Now sit your ass down, I have some interesting news.” Bernice sounded almost gleeful, which immediately perked Del’s interest.

He dried his hands quickly and took the closest seat—an old dining chair by the island. “Oh?”

“Guess who called me tonight?” Before he could answer, she cackled and said, “One Clyde Harding.”

Del’s jaw dropped. What the f**k did his treacherous asshat of an ex-husband want from his sister?

“What the f**k, Bernie? What—”

“Oh, it gets gooood, brother mine,” she almost-purred. “He wanted to ask if I could sell him the recipe for the Stew.”

Mind blown. That’s what Bernie’s daughter Abigail would’ve said. That one gif she’d sent him with the guy and the explosions flashed through Del’s brain.

“He what?”

“The call started all nice and cordial, which already was weird as f**k. I mean that fucker knows exactly what I think of him and—you know what, that’s not important here.” She took in a deep breath, and Del smiled a little. Bernie had always had their mom’s Irish temper and it had taken her forty years to figure out how to de-escalate her own temper. Boy was Del happy about it now.

“Okay, he calls to kiss ass and then…?” he prompted, pulling her back on track.

“Then he leads the conversation, such as it was, to the restaurant and how diners were displeased about not having the Stew anymore and maybe there was a way for him to get the recipe and how he’d be happy to pay big money for it.”

The longer she spoke, the tighter Del’s fingers had wrapped around the edge of the island. He consciously unclenched them and shook the hand to get his circulation going again.

“What did you tell him?”

“That the Stew wasn’t actually my recipe, or even our grandma’s like he thinks it is. I told him the truth; that it was a family recipe, but my brilliant chef brother tinkered with it for a decade to make it what it is today, and that he could go f**k himself with a hot pitchfork.”

Del wiped his eyes, not even surprised when his hand became wet from his tears.

Anything to do with his ex-husband, Clyde, made him pissed off and suspicious in equal measure these days. It had been a year since the divorce was finalized and he was finally free of the bastard, but he still expected a knife in his back whenever Clyde was mentioned. For a good reason, of course, but the fact that his brain had gone there even for a second when it came to Bernie…

“Hey, I know,” she whispered down the line.

Del chuckled wetly. It was true that nobody knew the recipe but him. The Stew was his, despite the meager start as a family favorite when their maternal grandmother had come over from Ireland as a young wife.

He still hated that his mind was now suspicious enough to think that somehow his sister would betray him. It wasn’t going to happen, ever, even if she’d known the recipe.

“He got a bit pissed off, you know?” And there was that gleeful tone again.

“Oh?” Del reached over to grab a piece of kitchen towel from the roll on the other side of the island.

“Yeah, but he couldn’t really get any real momentum going before I hung up on him. But I think it’s safe to say they haven’t been able to come close to your recipe and the restaurant is starting to fail.”

Part of Del loved that news, not that it was news to him, really. He still had people in there who kept him posted, even after a year and a half from his departure. But the restaurant Clyde had bought for him as an engagement present a decade ago had still been Del’s baby.

As the head chef of Trim—named after the town in Ireland where his grandma had been born—he’d been able to mold it into whatever he’d wanted. He’d ended up with a very successful Irish-French fusion with guest chefs who had brought their own flavors into play.

“It’s bittersweet,” Del finally said, after blowing his nose. “Trim was…”

“Yeah, I know Delly.” And she did know, she’d been part of the process when he’d been figuring out the menu, digging archives and family cookbooks for things he might’ve missed in the first ten times he’d done it over the years.

Del cleared his throat. “Thanks for letting me know. I’ll give Paul a call, let him know Clyde is poaching.”

“All right. You hang in there, Del. Love you.”

“Love you too. Tell the family I said hi.”

They ended the call and Del got up to get himself a glass of lime-mint water from the fridge. He didn’t drink these days, but he’d once loved mojitos and well, sometimes it was all about the little pleasures.

He wandered to his office in the back of the house with his drink and cell phone, and sat down heavily. He felt old suddenly. Instead of dwelling on it, he called his lawyer.

Paul Winters answered almost immediately. “Del, hi.”

“Hey, Paul. Guess what?”

“What did Clyde do now?” Paul’s tone went into the pissed off rumble it always would. Neither of them had had the most positive experience with Clyde during the divorce proceedings.

“He called Bernice and tried to buy the Stew recipe,” Del replied calmly, then pulled the phone away from his ear to let Paul cuss out a storm in peace and without damage to Del’s own ear drums.

“But she doesn’t even have it!” Paul scoffed. “Did he actually offer her money?”

“I think it was heavily implied. He knows he can’t actually offer to buy anything from anyone in my family, so…you know.” Clyde was rich as f**k, but he wasn’t stupid.

“All right. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll make a note of it, in case we need this later, but let’s hope he gives up.”

“Trim isn’t doing so well,” Del said quietly.

Paul knew what Trim had meant to him. The fact that Del was sitting in the old house was a testament to that. He’d used all his savings to hire Paul so he knew Clyde would pay every cent for Del’s half of the restaurant. Well, that, and to make sure the divorce ran as smoothly as it could.

Once Del had gotten the money from Trim, he’d been pretty much set for a new life, but instead, he’d run back into his grandma’s house in bumfuck Oregon. He’d needed the comfort, and somehow, he was there still, a year later.

“So I’ve understood. You know that’s not on him and the people who matter know it too, right?” Paul sighed. “Look, Del, I might’ve never told this to you before, but I might as well now: Trim isn’t your legacy.”

Del blinked, not sure what to make of the statement.

Paul continued before he could gather enough words together for a sentence. “I don’t know if the cookbook is, either, but it’s a start of building something new. Maybe you’ll never own another restaurant, but you sure can run one. But first, you need to figure out what you really want out of life.”

“Yeah,” Del replied in lieu of saying anything intelligent. It smarted to hear the words from Paul who had become a trusted friend in the couple of years they’d known each other.

“Look, I got to go, I’m prepping yet another divorce settlement, but call me if you need me, okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll do that. Bye, Paul.” Del disconnected the call and put the cell on his messy desk.