Cooking Up Romance

“Well done.”

They’d gotten off to a rocky start after Mona had left, Emma hurt and missing her mom, him angry and nearly devastated by Mona’s lies. But they’d made it through their first Christmas, then Easter and both of their birthdays together, and they seemed to be getting the hang of this father-daughter thing. Just the two of them. His little girl deserved a happy normal life, and he was determined to give it to her.

Cooking lessons. Where did you send a kid for such things?

She made an exaggerated inhale. “Sure smells good. My mouth is watering.” Her chocolate-colored eyes lit up. “Remember that delicious wrap you brought home for me Friday?”

How could he forget. It was the best meal he’d had all week. “Yeah, you wouldn’t share it with me.”

“Because you already had your half!”

True, but he could’ve easily eaten the rest without Emma ever knowing about it.

“Anyways,” she said, “That would’ve gone great with this soup.”

“So will the grilled cheese. You have a knack for pairing food.”

Raising a ten-year-old daughter by himself often baffled him. He only wanted to do right by her, but he worried in the beginning he messed up more than he got things right. Their life together was leveling out now, the two of them had gotten closer, and he cared about this small human being more than he ever thought possible. The last thing he wanted to do was throw things out of kilter again.

He’d love to see Emma learn how to cook if that was what she really wanted, since his talents were in construction not the kitchen. Even his burgers left something to be desired, often dry and tasteless, in need of extra ketchup and mustard.

Because of that TV show, Emma had recently shown a huge interest in the subject of cooking. Wasn’t it a practical life skill everyone should learn? Besides, he didn’t want to raise the girl on fast food. She deserved better.

His mind went back to the redhead, Lacy, for about the dozenth time over the weekend, and it wasn’t strictly over the fact she was a great cook. Mona had caused him to recoil from all things female, which made thinking about Lacy all the more aggravating. It’d been a long time since he’d even noticed a woman, but how could a guy not notice that amazing red hair and those eyes that looked like a piece of the sky itself? See, that’s where he could get himself into trouble, and who needed the frustration at this stage in life. She was a great cook, too, from what he’d tasted so far. He’d slipped up and sort of hired her. Temporarily, he reminded himself. But it was probably a big mistake. What had he been thinking? Hopefully, his crew would like her wraps as much as he had.

“Starting tomorrow, when you have to come to work with me, we can share your choice of wrap three days a week.” Easter and spring break had rolled back around, which meant no school. Last year it had cost a fortune to send her to day camp at the YMCA; this year he figured she was old enough to entertain herself and still get some extra dad time.

The bit about the wrap got Emma’s complete attention, her big brown eyes watching him as if he held the key to life.

“The food truck that wrap came from is going to be parking at my construction site for lunch tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday.”

“Really? Yay, I can’t wait!” Emma ladled soup into bowls with such excitement that a lot wound up on the counter.

He grabbed a paper towel and mopped up the hot spillage. “You’re gonna like her truck. It’s pink.”

“My favorite color!”

That truth hadn’t gone unnoticed the day Lacy had driven up. He threw out the paper towel and got a sponge for the rest of the cleanup. “Don’t forget to bring things to keep yourself busy tomorrow.”

“Like my crocheting? And my Bettina Ballerina books?”

“If you like. Anything but watching movies. You’re going to have to entertain yourself a lot while I work.”

“Like I have to do around here?”

That stung, but it was true. “You’re good at it, aren’t you?”

She nodded, gave that adorable smile, and all he wanted to do was hug his little girl.

“Everything’s ready, Dad,” Emma said, pure pride in her high-toned voice.

“Wow, this looks great.” The sandwiches were browned to perfection, then placed on small plates with a pickle spear each, and the soup was in wide bowls, steam rising from the warm broth. He carried the hot stuff to the table and let her handle the grilled cheese.

“It’s called presentation.”

She’d obviously learned that from the Junior Chefs show, because he simply threw food on the plates. His kid had already figured out how to arrange things to make them look inviting. The next thought hit with a ball of anxiety: he’d be in way over his head by the time she was a teenager.

“Someday, I want to be a cook for a big restaurant,” she said, delivering her plates, then rushing to grab some paper napkins. “I just need to learn how.”

“Shortcake, I don’t doubt you’ll be able to do anything you put your mind to.” He sat. “Now let’s eat. I’m so hungry I may need seconds.”

Halfway through the meal he got an idea. “Maybe we can search online for some kid-friendly recipes that you can try right here at home. And I can help.” Maybe he’d pick up a few cooking tips, too, as it would be right at his level.

Her already large eyes nearly doubled in size. “Could we?”

His eleven-year marriage may have hit the dumpster, but he’d struck pure gold with his daughter.

Lacy arrived home from the wedding job and got right to work cleaning the truck. A few minutes in, it occurred she hadn’t updated her social media today. She accessed her page on her cell phone, and where it asked the question What’s on your mind? she posted: Worked a wedding today at the Natural History Museum. So Pretty. Have a new job starting tomorrow. Can’t wait. To encourage interaction, on a whim, she asked: Do you believe everyone has a double somewhere out there?Then she posted a couple pictures of the museum surroundings, and the backs of several of the hat wearers’ heads because they looked so springlike and pretty. Before she signed off to get back to work, she’d already picked up a few likes but, so far, no comments.

She had a big day tomorrow and needed to set up for the Gardner construction-site job. Saturday she’d prepared and marinated the steak and chicken in twenty-gallon plastic containers, enough for both the wedding and the new job. Half of it was left in the industrial-sized refrigerator in the garage for tomorrow. She’d also made up the tuna and egg salads, chopped all the veggies, diced potatoes, and made sure she had enough assorted wraps, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles and olives for no less than a hundred sandwiches.

Excitement buzzed through her over the shot at being permanently employed, though the odd feeling since that hat lady had called her Eva still hovered. What if she did look exactly like someone else? There went the hair on her arms again.

She checked her social media for comments. There were many more likes; still, no one had chimed in on her pressing question.

A couple hours later, when all was set to go for tomorrow, the strange feeling still hadn’t faded. Maybe it was because after her father passed, she’d become an official orphan. What if there was someone out there, another relative? Could there be? She’d been feeling so alone since her dad died, yet instead of reaching out to friends and out-of-the area relatives for comfort, she’d been keeping to herself. She was lonely, but somehow it was also safe. In fact, for the last year she’d been making a point of protecting herself, because, well, who else was going to? She was all she had.

Her mother had died in a car accident when Lacy had been ten, something she still hadn’t gotten over. Her mom had left for her shift at the library one morning and got hit head-on by a cement truck barreling around a bend. Just like that. Gone. It had been a tough age to lose the most important person in a little girl’s life. There simply was no replacing a mother. Her dad had done his best, but mostly he seemed baffled by the little female in his life, and Lacy had no way of knowing men were so different from women on the emotional scale, something that would have helped her understand his awkward reactions whenever she tried to tell him her deepest thoughts. After a while, she’d simply given up. Not that she didn’t love him. Of course she did, but communicating was altogether different with her dad than with her friends. So she often longed for her mother and ached to talk to her. Unfortunately, twenty-one years later, her memories of her mom were dim except for one thing. She knew she’d been loved and even cherished. She’d felt it in her soul. Just like she knew without a doubt her father had loved her, too. She’d been wanted and loved by her parents and that should be enough for any person. Why wasn’t it?

And then, when Greg had been killed during deployment five years ago, she didn’t think she’d ever get over losing the love of her life. He’d been everything she’d longed for—compassionate, caring, tender and easy to love. He’d also been fearless and willing to sacrifice, and the adventurous part of him had sent him away…to never return. Lacy’s hand rubbed circles around her chest remembering how her heart had been ripped in half the day she’d gotten the news.

Last year, her father had suffered a major heart attack while exerting himself loading a stack of twenty-gallon containers of homemade potato salad and coleslaw onto his food truck, and had died suddenly. A neighbor had found him in the garage, and Lacy had been grateful it hadn’t been her. She’d fallen apart completely when the police officer had showed up at the restaurant’s kitchen and notified her. The three most important people in her life had all been taken from her without warning. Now she was thirty-one and single, without parents, husband or siblings. A total orphan.

Her life experience so far had pounded home one major point—she lost the people she loved.

Sadness and longing wrapped around her until it was hard to breathe. She’d always thought of herself as a family person. She’d chosen not to move out of Little River Valley like most of her high school friends had done. Instead, she’d wanted to live close to her father and saw him several times a week. He was all she had, and she treated that bond with great care.

Since he’d died, she’d moved back into her childhood home because she’d inherited it. It felt so empty without him, which forced her to accept that she wasn’t meant to be alone. Yet she’d made no effort to reach out to new people and instead had drawn inward even though she’d always hated being an only child. Truth was, she felt stuck, like running in a dream getting nowhere, longing for something out of her reach.

As far back as she could remember, she’d thought something had been missing. As though they’d been meant to be a bigger family. When she would ask her parents why she didn’t have a sister or brother, they’d get all tongue-tied. Enough so that she’d learned to quit asking and, instead, worked on accepting that they’d simply run out of time. Yet there’d been a big hole in her heart, and she couldn’t deny it, long before Mom had died. As if something else had been ripped away, leaving a huge gap in her life.

What was with the gloomy black cloud hovering low tonight?

Slipping into the dumps certainly wasn’t how she wanted to end her day. Not on the eve of a new start! But her memories had been stirred at the wedding, and something deeper had gotten released. That person had called her Eva and told her she looked exactly like her. So strange. Truth was, when most kids created pretend pals, she’d had an imaginary sister named Jilly—even when Mom was alive, so Lacy couldn’t rationalize that it was because of losing a parent. For as long as she could remember, she’d wished for a sister, as if without one she could never be whole. Jilly helped fill that void until Lacy knew the time had come to grow up and leave her secret sister behind.

Then years later, on a group date, she’d met Greg and soon after had never felt more complete in her life.

Spurred on by the day’s events, old thoughts and new questions, she strode to the guest bedroom in the 1960s California ranch house, the room with the attic opening. Once there, after pulling down the door with a broomstick-length hook and unfolding the spring-operated ladder, she climbed up and switched on the dangling single lightbulb inside. Boxes and boxes of her parents’ papers were stored up there. Hopefully, someone had taken the time to label some of them.