Chapter 21
Grace
The pouring rain had softened to a steady drizzle. Walking toward the front door of my building, I spotted an enormous yellow sunflower sitting on the front steps. As I got closer, I realized that it was only a picture of a sunflower printed on an umbrella. Monica was underneath it, shivering, her feet wet, holding a foil-covered pan in her lap.
“What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you. I brought you some cannoli. I’ve been experimenting with some new recipes.”
“And you couldn’t wait until Monday to share? What’s the matter with you? You’re getting soaked. Come inside.”
I unlocked the door, set about turning the lights on and the heat up, then greeted Maisie, who wriggled in rapture over my return.
“Oh, yes. I know,” I cooed, squatting down to Chihuahua level. “I’m glad to see you too. How about a biscuit before dinner?”
Maisie let out an approving yip. I picked her up and started toward the kitchen but stopped short when I realized Monica was still standing by the front door.
“Aren’t you going to come in?”
“Maybe not. I’m worried about getting water all over your wood floors.”
“Oh, Monica. Hang on a sec.”
After making a quick side trip to the kitchen for Maisie’s biscuit, I grabbed an armful of towels from the bathroom, exchanging them for the pan of cannoli. While Monica dried off, I went into the kitchen, filled Maisie’s bowl with kibble, and started making tea.
“Shouldn’t you be at the restaurant?” I called across the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room.
“Soon. Ben can handle things by himself for a bit.”
Monica walked into the kitchen in her stockinged feet. The bottom few inches of her pants were damp, but she wasn’t dripping anymore.
“You got caught in the rain too?” she asked.
I reached a hand up to my hair. After my unexpected ouster from Spector, I’d gone for a long drive, taking my anger and anxiety out on the twists and turns of Portland’s West Hills. Without the benefit of a blow-dryer and styling products, my hair had dried into an unruly, frizzy mess.
“I forgot my umbrella when I left the office,” I said, lifting the foil off the cannoli.
“There are a couple missing from the pan,” Monica said as she pulled up the counter stool that was my only kitchen seating. “A homeless woman came by asking for money. I didn’t have any cash so I gave her some cannoli.”
“Dishwater blond hair and rhinestone nose piercing?”
“Uh-huh.”
The microwave beeped. I pulled out the mugs and tossed a teabag into each.
“Must have been Sunny. Did she look okay? I’ve been worried about her.”
“She looked pale. And skinny.”
“That’s normal,” I said, and pulled two mismatched dessert plates out of the cupboard, then placed two pastries on each one. “Sad, but normal.”
“She was starving,” Monica said. “I gave her a cannoli and she wolfed it down while she was standing there, so I gave her two more. I thought she might be high.”
“Probably.”
“Hey,” Monica said, frowning as she looked around the apartment, “when are you going to finish unpacking the boxes and actually move into this place? It really does look like a refugee camp. I mean, do you think you could invest in more than one stool? Or maybe even a table? Possibly some plates that match?”
“I’m not too certain about the investment part, but, as of today, I’ll have plenty of time to unpack boxes.” I dug two forks out of a drawer and handed one, plus the mug of tea, to Monica. “They fired me.”
“You’re kidding,” she said, sounding surprised, but not quite as surprised as I’d have supposed. “Oh, Grace. That sucks. If there ever was a time that you needed a high-fat dessert, now is that time.”
“How true.” Standing at the counter, I picked up my fork, took a bite of cannoli, and groaned. “Oh, Monica. Oh, wow. This is amazing.”
She beamed. “Pretty good, right? I’ve been tinkering with the recipe.”
“Good? It borders on a religious experience. What’s in here?”
“Besides the ricotta and sugar? Marsala, slivered almonds, and a lot of lemon peel. Try the chocolate one,” she urged. “That’s got hazelnuts and candied orange.”
She didn’t have to ask twice.
“Oh, wow,” I said, closing my eyes in rapture. “This one is even better than the other. How is that possible? And how did you know I needed this today?”
How did she know? Okay, sure, I was just back from the funeral, but why would she be sitting on my front stoop in the rain at five thirty when she knows I’m lucky to get home by eight?
“I just had a feeling,” she said quickly when I asked her, shrugging and looking very guilty.
“You just had a feeling? Come on. What aren’t you telling me?”
Her eyes darted away from mine and she licked her lips.
“Monica,” I said in a warning tone.
“Okay, fine. I didn’t have a feeling. Luke called me. He told me all about bringing you flowers, and having coffee with you, and then how his ex-wife showed up.”
“And?”
“And after you left, it started to rain so he stuck around and finished his coffee, waiting for it to let up. But it didn’t, so, finally, he ran out to his truck. That’s when he saw you, crossing the street without a coat, getting wet and carrying a box, and looking really ticked off.”
“He was watching me!” I gasped.
“Oh, stop it. You act like he’s some kind of stalker. Okay, sure,” Monica said, spreading her hands a bit, “he showed up in your coffee shop unexpectedly a couple of times. But that part was my fault. Really, Grace, he wasn’t watching you. He happened to see you, put two and two together, then called me. That’s it. He wasn’t stalking you; he was worried about you. Luke is a really great guy, trust me.”
I heaved a sigh. “Fine. If you say so. I’ve bigger things to worry about right now. Anyway,” I said, taking another bite of cannoli, “I’m glad you’re here.”
Monica tsked her tongue. “So Gavin honestly fired you the day after you got back from your husband’s funeral? That’s one for the Heartless Hall of Fame.”
“Technically,” I said, “Ava was the one who fired me. But she was following Gavin’s orders.”
“Wow. He didn’t even have the guts to pull the trigger himself?”
I shook my head. “Nope, I’m sure he didn’t consider it the highest and best use of his time. As you know, Gavin is very big on delegating the details to people lower in the pecking order.”
“What a sniveling little coward,” Monica snarled.
For some reason, seeing the disgusted look on her face, like she was about to scrape something unspeakable off her shoe, felt oddly vindicating. I told her about my whole day, from the moment I stepped off the elevator that morning, to the moment I stepped back on it, carrying the contents of my desk in a cardboard box.
“The worst part was that there was a security guard standing there, watching me while I cleaned out my desk. Apparently it’s standard procedure now that Spector bought the company, but it was so humiliating. What did they think I was going to do?” I asked, crunching through the cannoli crust. “Steal company secrets? Make a scene?”
“Well, I would have,” Monica said. “But you’re not the scene-making type. How about a strongly worded letter to HR instead? Or better yet, Gavin’s boss? Something starting with, ‘Dear Heartless, Soulless Corporate Flunkies . . .’ ”
Monica hopped off the stool and helped herself to another pastry.
“I actually was thinking about that,” I said. “They just brought on a new CEO, a woman. I thought I’d try writing to her. I doubt it’ll make any difference, but they might add it to his file. And, if nothing else, it’d make me feel better.”
“Good for you, Grace. I think you should. One more?” she asked, lifting a chocolate cannoli from the pan.
“No, thanks.”
I hadn’t finished even half of the first two, not because I was concerned about the calorie count—today of all days I was entitled to eat whatever I wanted—but because the turn of the conversation had killed my appetite.
I put down my fork and looked at my condo for the first time in a long time, really looked at it, seeing it the way Monica had. Like everything else in my life, it seemed confused and disjointed, a great big mess.
“You know my mom was trying to convince me to move back to Minnesota, but I told her I couldn’t because of my job. Now I don’t have a job. And look at this place. I’ve never really lived here, just occupied the space. I’m practically a squatter,” I said morosely. “What in the world am I doing here?”
“Well, being my friend for one thing,” Monica replied, turning her back to the counter and crossing her arms. “That might not be all that important to you, but it’s very important to me. And to Nan.
“But, hey, if you want to run back to Minnesota with your tail between your legs, move into your mother’s basement, and milk cows for the rest of your life, I guess that’s your business. But if you think I’m going to let you skip town before the Dogmother’s Ball, think again. I can’t throw a party for a hundred and twenty-five people and hounds by myself. I’m going to need a little help.”
“For your information,” I said, “I have never milked a cow. And I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just . . .” I blinked a few times. “It’s been a bad day, Monica. A really, really bad day.”
“I know,” Monica said gently, crossing the tiny kitchen to stand next to me. “A bad day after a bad week, and a bad month, and a bad two years. I get it. I do. You’re entitled to spend some time feeling sorry for yourself.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“You’re welcome.” Monica put her arm over my shoulder and stood with me in silent solidarity.
For about ten seconds.
“Okay,” she said, removing her arm. “Time’s up.”
I shot her a look.
“I’m not kidding, Grace. It’s true, you have all kinds of very good, very real reasons to sit here and feel sorry for yourself. I’m not trying to minimize what you’ve been through. But it’s been like that for close to two years now. It’s enough.”
I tried to speak, to remind her about what Nan said, that there’s no timetable for grief, but she wasn’t having any of it.
“Maybe there isn’t,” she said, “but maybe there should be. Do you remember the night we met at the community center? All those weeping widows who’d been coming to the group for years and years without graduating? I wouldn’t want to see that happen to you. Okay, sure,” she said, countering my argument before I even had a chance to speak, “you could say it hasn’t been that long, but if you really think about it, you’ve been in this exact same spot, grieving, for almost two years.
“Jamie’s fall left him stuck halfway between one world and the next. You’ve been stuck too. But now, finally, Jamie is at peace. He’s moved on. I know it’s sad and hard. But nobody knows better than you that life is short, precarious, and precious. It’s time for you to figure out what you want to do with yours. Find the thing that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning.”
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Well, maybe everybody’s right. And, I hate to pull rank, but if Jamie were here, I bet he’d say the same thing.”
I didn’t like to say so, but she was probably right.
“Did I ever tell you how I got to be a chef?” Monica asked. “I was working at this restaurant, waiting tables. The food wasn’t very good and, you know, shrinking violet that I am”—she grinned—“I kept giving the chef suggestions. Just by way of being helpful.
“One day, I told him his marinara sauce needed more garlic. He started screaming, said I was fired and that he didn’t need some stupid, scrawny, mouthy girl telling him how to run his kitchen and that if I thought I knew so much about cooking, then maybe I ought to open my own damned restaurant. Then he threw a colander at my head. And as I ducked, I thought, You know something? Maybe he’s right.
“Six weeks later, I was enrolled as a student at Oregon Culinary Institute and the rest is history. I’ve loved my work ever since.”
“Ever since? Two months ago you said that you didn’t like cooking anymore, that it was just a job.”
Monica waved her hand dismissively. “That was just because I was frustrated with the kids. Once Alex quit spending every waking moment figuring out how to make my life miserable, I started loving my job all over again—especially when he was at the restaurant with me. That was really fun. I mean, Zoe still keeps me awake at night, but I was actually starting to feel like I had the stepmother gig down.
“But,” she sighed, “since Alex recently decided he hates my guts again and has gone back to being a card-carrying jerk, I’m sure that’s about to change. We’ve reverted back to our old roles. Once again, he is my Rotten Stepson and I am the Evil Stepmother, Cruella De Vil in chef’s whites.”
“Why? What happened?”
She swiped a finger across her plate, capturing some leftover cannoli filling.
“Oh, it’s that girl—Gwen. She dumped him. He’s heartbroken and miserable. And since misery loves company . . .” She shrugged. “He’ll be fine. But I kind of miss having him around the kitchen.”
She licked the filling off her finger. “Speaking of the kitchen, I’ve got to get back to work.”
I walked her to the door. She put on her jacket and gave me a hug.
“Are you going to be all right?”
I nodded. “Thanks for the cannoli. It was just what I needed today.”
“And the advice?” she asked, smiling wryly. “Listen, I know I’m being pushy, but I really think a push is what you need right now. That being said—” She paused abruptly and took a big, somewhat dramatic breath. “I owe you an apology. That stunt I pulled, trying to throw you and Luke together, wasn’t just pushy, it was stupid, and misguided, and really, really thoughtless.”
I tried to interrupt, to say that I knew her heart—if not her head—had been in the right place, but Monica shook me off.
“No, Grace. I was wrong. And I’m sorry. Watching the way you cared for Jamie in the last days of his life, never leaving his side for a moment, helped me finally realize just how wrong. You tried to make me understand how sacred your love—and your marriage vows—were to you, but I just didn’t get it.
“Or,” she said, her voice lower, her tone sincerely remorseful, “maybe I didn’t want to get it. The love you shared with Jamie—pure and totally unselfish—I’ve never known that kind of love. I probably never will.”
“Oh, Monica. Don’t say that. You’ll fall in love someday. You will,” I insisted, responding to the doubtful look on her face. “Probably when you least expect it.”
“Yeah, sure. Maybe,” she said, then grabbed her umbrella, which she’d left leaning against the wall to dry. “But we’ll worry about me another day. Right now, my concern is you.
“I know this is the very last thing you want to hear, but Ava could be right, you know. Getting fired might turn out to be the best thing that could happen to you right now. Okay, sure. It would have been nice if they waited a week or two to can you, but it is what it is.
“The good news is, you’re still getting paid. The clock is ticking, Grace, but you’ve got two months to figure this out.
“So, for the rest of this week, you get to take it easy. Sleep till noon, play with your dog, eat stuff you shouldn’t, and watch a really, really sad DVD. Something that will make you want to cry, yell, shake your fist at the universe, and get it all out of your system. Then get back to work and decide what you want to do with your life.”
“Easy to say, but how? Where do you expect me to start?”
Monica pointed the tip of her umbrella toward a corner near the front window.
“How about that box?”