I woke up to the sound of rain. In my exhausted state, I thought the sound was the roof caving in or my window AC unit dying of emphysema. Verona Cove doesn’t get rain in the summer. It just doesn’t.
Sure enough, the sky beyond my third-story window is a mechanical gray. It’s not a summer shower. My clock reads 10:00 a.m., which is not possible.
I pass Leah’s room on my way to the kitchen. She’s still curled in a ball like a sleepy kitten. I never realized it’s the sunshine that wakes her up so early every morning. Downstairs, Bekah and Isaac are playing a board game I haven’t seen in years. They’re quiet. Not fighting.
Today is confusing.
I shower and make us egg sandwiches for breakfast instead of oatmeal because, hey—the world is backward anyway. It’s raining, my siblings are mellow, and we’re eating high-cholesterol food. Leah makes a face at her egg sandwich after one bite, so I bring it up to my mom. She’s sitting on her bed with a pile of papers fanned out around her. But she’s dressed in something other than pajamas. And her hair looks different. Shiny. Brushed?
“Hey, pal,” she says, looking up. Her face is alert. It’s hard to explain why the change is so immediately noticeable. When someone is so sad for so long, they lack the energy to move even the tiniest facial muscle. Like they’re too sad to even fully lift their eyelids. This morning, there’s a twitch of movement in my mom’s cheeks. Her forehead isn’t drooping.
“Hey. I brought you a breakfast sandwich. It’s slightly used. By Leah. But still warm.”
“Thanks.” A real smile.
Seriously. Whose life did I wake up to?
I squint at the papers around her. I can’t resist asking. “What are you doing?”
She tucks a wisp of hair behind her ear. “Well, Naomi has been taking care of a lot of household stuff for me.”
All my muscles cramp. Money talk makes me feel sweatier than a marathon runner.
“She’s been doing a wonderful job, but she needed some help with it this month. So I’m rebalancing to make sure we’re all set.” Maybe she senses my hypertension. “Which we are.”
“Do you know why I majored in accounting?” she asks, scribbling something down on the pad of paper in her hands.
I do know this, actually. It’s easy to forget how well I know my mom. Her grief seems like a disguise but, underneath it, I know her. “Because you love math.”
“I really do,” she agrees. “And I love math because there’s always a right answer. It’s not interpretive; it’s not subjective. There is a correct destination, even if you have to hack through confusing parts to get there. That’s not always true in life.”
I’m glad she’s staring down at her numbers and figures. She doesn’t see my jaw drop just enough to part my lips. My mom is seemingly functional and even—God—musing about life? I feel insane for reading into this. It’s a mirage, like when she tried to go to the grocery store. It looked like a good sign. It ended in public sobbing.
“You’re right,” I say dumbly. “Well, let me know if you need anything.”
I’m still shaking my head, stupefied, when my phone beeps. I expect Vivi. Come to think of it, I’m surprised she hasn’t shown up yet. At our front door, wearing a raincoat and boots and imploring us to dance outside with her. I assume she picked up a shift at the pottery shop. Still, it’s a rare morning that I don’t wake up to a series of dirty and imaginative text messages. She doesn’t sleep much.
But it’s Felix. Slammed. Come in?
The restaurant is almost never slammed during lunch, especially on summer weekdays. Most vacationers don’t even realize we’re open for lunch. But the morning beachgoers have to drive by Tony’s on their way back into town. They’re probably ducking in for lunch and hoping to wait out the storm.
Verona Cove’s tourist brochure calls the weather here “perfect.” It’s never sticky hot in the summer, and almost never freezing in the winter. But today I feel the cold front. I hurry through the rain with an old golf umbrella I found in the hallway closet. By the time I reach Main Street, the backs of my jeans are splattered.
The Tony’s sandwich board is out on the street. Someone wedged an umbrella handle in the space at the top where the two sides meet. From a distance, it looks like a very short, very squat person huddled under an umbrella. But the open umbrella protects careful chalk writing. I can read the bright white letters even through the rain. RAINY DAY SPECIAL: Hot Soups and Homemade Bread.
We’ve never offered homemade bread, and we only ever have one soup of the day. I pinch the skin on my forearm, hard, because this feels like a dream. One of those weird ones where it’s your life but the details are all messed up.
Inside, the kitchen is especially steamy, and the smell is overpowering and savory. More than that. Fragrant and yeasty and baked. Felix is chopping vegetables like a madman. Gabe is manning a stovetop full of deep soup pots.
“Jonah!” Ellie calls. “Hey!”
She’s at the prep station near the ovens, rubbing the tops of four loaves of bread dough with shiny olive oil. Her dark hair is tied back loosely beneath a too-big baseball cap that I recognize as Felix’s. She’s wearing a floral apron that she must have brought from home.
“Hey. You wanna catch me up here?”
Her hands move so fast it looks like she has four or six arms—a frantic cartoon character. Yet her voice is controlled, all business. “We’re doing six soups: classic tomato, minestrone, chicken noodle, hot and sour, tortilla, and a special Thai coconut that I thought was risky, but my dad nailed it—customers are obsessed. We also have four breads to choose from: French bread, corn bread, Asiago, and garlic rosemary.”
Ellie pauses, taking a breath. Her hands sprinkle loose herbs onto the bread loaves, which she then pats down expertly. “A bowl of soup and your choice of bread as a side for five dollars. Or, for three dollars extra, you can get a grilled cheese with your soup. Add more than one type of cheese for fifty cents each. The available cheeses are—”
“I know them.” I created the dairy organizational system in the fridge last year. I can recite the cheese alphabetically or by flavor, mild to sharp. I’ll have to put that on my college applications. Jonah Daniels: cheese arranger. I may have quit all my school activities to take care of my siblings, but, hey, I can keep a kitchen staff from mixing up provolone with mozzarella slices. Full-scholarship material.
“Oh, right.” She laughs at herself as she washes flecks of rosemary off her hands. “I’m sales-pitching you like you’re a customer. We need another person on the floor, so I’m going to take orders if you can handle the bread for me. Unless you want to wait tables.”
“No. Cooking, good.” My mind is already whipped up in the rush of the kitchen; my hands are on autopilot, tying my apron behind my back. The kitchen is best when we’re on the brink of chaos. Being understaffed is a total adrenaline rush. It doesn’t happen enough.
After Ellie explains the bread schedule and leaves, I stand there for a moment. It’s a lot to take in. Felix laughs at me as he slides a mound of vegetables from his cutting board to a huge pot. “She’s a girl with a plan.”
Okay, game time. I transfer the now perfectly crusted Asiago bread into the warming oven and move to the corn-bread batter. “How’d you come up with this?”
Another snort of laughter from Felix. “C’mon, Maní, you think I came up with this? It was all that kid of mine. She woke up early and smelled the rain like a basset hound. Next thing you know, she’s down here with her abuela’s bread recipes, talking me into her plan. All right, quick run to Patterson’s for more carrots and celery and . . . what else did we say?”
“Coconut milk!” Gabe calls from the stove. When Felix is out the back door, Jack, one of the prep cooks, looks up from plating the soups with the grilled cheeses. “How old is Ellie?”
“Sixteen. No, Jack.”
“Yes, Jack!” he says. “I’m only eighteen. What? I think I’ve got a shot. She’s a cool girl.”
“Dude, she would eat you alive.”
“What!”
“Ellie takes zero shit.” I put the corn bread in the oven. “And you are full of it.”
He and Gabe live to joke around in the kitchen, and I have to admit they’re funny. But, as if to prove my point, the kitchen door swings open. Ellie sticks her head in. “Hurry it up, you clowns.”
The restaurant stays packed through the lunch hour. Bread in the oven, bread out, season the chicken broth, on and on. My mind numbs in that way I’ve only ever found in the kitchen. And with Vivi. Despite the frantic pace, I sneak a moment to peer out the kitchen door. It’s a swinging door with a Plexiglas circle window out to the dining room. When I was little, it made me think of a submarine. There are families at every table. Lifting spoonfuls of soup to their mouths, slathering butter on their bread. Heads leaning back in loud laughter. The restaurant is busy, but the world feels slow. No one is hurrying because there’s nothing to hurry to. They’re together. I miss my dad so much that my stomach almost heaves. I have to keep moving, keep working.
By 4:00 p.m., they’ve cleared out, and the dinner-prep shift has started to overlap with our finely honed routine.
“Go home, both of you,” Felix tells Ellie and me. “You worked a good day.”
“Okay,” Ellie replies, leaning over to kiss her dad on the cheek. She turns to me. “Are you walking home? I have something to show you.”
“Yeah, uh. Okay.” I glance back at Felix to see if he looks in the know. He looks amused.
“You’re a dick,” Jack says, pointing at me.
Outside, Ellie’s waiting. The rain has stopped. The air still smells like wet dirt and ozone. As we walk out the door, she hands me a folded sheet of paper, which is covered in the blue ink of her neat handwriting.
“Some notes. Well . . . observations, I guess.” She points to the first line. “I spent some time thinking about trends in my interactions with customers as their waitress. Because, you know, they ask me about certain dishes or tell me which ones they’re trying to decide between.”
I start at the top. Overview. Types of Customers: Townie Regulars, “Something Light and Healthy” Vacationers, and People Who Just Want the Most Possible Amount of Food.
My eyes jump to the bottom of the page. Conclusions:, it says, like this is a paper for school, Create an official kids’ menu with a few simple offerings, expand our salad menu so customers can add grilled chicken or shrimp, designate meals on the menu that are vegetarian and gluten-free, and also create a few more options that are vegetarian and gluten-free . . .
There are more. “Uhh . . . wow.”
Ellie clears her throat. “After today, I also think we should consider a sandwich-and-soup combo for the lunch hour.”
“Yeah, great.” My word bank has depleted after the dizzying lunch shift. This is great. And unexpected. I know Ellie said she wanted to help, but I had no idea she cared this much. “Great.”
“I hope you don’t think I’m stepping on your toes! After we talked at the bonfire, I realized I have some insight about our customers and what they seem to want.”
“No!” I say. “This is great. I mean, wow. It’s so organized and . . . clear.”
Ellie looks momentarily embarrassed, though her easy smile makes me think I imagined it. “What can I say? I was inspired.”
“I’m glad. It’s great.”
Say great again, self. Seriously.
“One last thing. I think, for vacationers, it’s unclear what kind of restaurant Tony’s is. I know it’s a big change, but I was thinking . . . what if we called it Tony’s Bistro?”
“Huh.” I consider this. “Yeah. That sums it up. Casual but nice. You think your dad would go for it?”
She nods. “I really do.”
I fold the paper and slide it into my back pocket. We pass the pottery shop, and I glance in to look for Vivi. Only Whitney is in there, and she waves to Ellie and me. I check my phone for texts, but there’s nothing to find. It’s not like her.
“So,” Ellie says. “How’s your mom? I’ve only seen her at church once or twice since I got home from camp.”
“Oh, you know . . . fine.”
Most people nod solemnly, relieved to have the awkward social obligation of asking out of the way. Ellie is quiet, so I glance over at her. She’s narrowing her eyes. I can hardly see past her heavy eyelashes.
“Jonah.” She slows her pace considerably, and I do, too. “How is your mom really?”
We both stop. We’re standing on the sidewalk outside the park. I cross my arms. I open my mouth to say fine again, more convincingly this time. But saying it again seems like even more of a lie. Ellie’s dark eyes study me, waiting, and I finally confess. “Not good. At all.”
I start walking again, making a getaway from those four words. I broke the barrier between our family and the outside world. Exposed us. Ellie catches up, right beside me.
“Like how not good?” Her whole face is soft. Being pitied makes me feel pitiful.
“Like barely gets out of bed, okay?” My voice sounds mean even though I would never intentionally snap at her. “Sorry. It’s bad. It’s . . . I don’t know.”
I expect her to ask why the hell I haven’t gotten my mom some help. I expect her to judge the entire way I’ve handled this situation as harshly as I judge myself for it.
Instead, she whispers, “I knew it.”
She whispers this to herself, like how you say dammit under your breath after you drop something.
“I’m so sorry, Jonah,” Ellie says. “Maybe it’s none of my business. I’ve just . . . had this feeling about it.”
“God, don’t apologize.” I try to laugh, but it sounds bitter. Because I am. “We’ve been trying to give my mom some time—Naomi and Silas and me. But they go off to school at the end of August, and I can’t take care of the three kids on my own. Silas is talking about putting college off for a year. I don’t want him to, but I don’t know what else to do.”
We walk a few slow steps, and I’m conflicted. As relieved as I am to let all this out, I feel like I’m doing something behind my family’s back.
“Hey, you two!” Mrs. Albrecht calls from across the street as Edgar pauses to sniff at the fire hydrant. Ellie and I both wave, but my face burns. It’s embarrassing the way that someone walking in on you in the bathroom is embarrassing. Caught in a private moment.
By the time we’re out of earshot, Ellie and I are standing at the corner where we have to go different directions.
“You do realize that, after everything with Diego, we know a lot about depression—medication, therapy, listening to one another, and talking.” Her eyebrows are scrunched together, but I can’t tell if she’s confused or hurt. Or both. “Why haven’t you told my dad?”
“Because . . . because it’s only been seven months. Because, in a weird way, it feels like her business, not mine. I don’t want to embarrass her. There are a lot of reasons, I guess.”
She nods slowly. “Fair enough. What can I do?”
“Nothing.” Just like that, I snap shut. It’s an instinct, after seven months. “I mean, thanks, but we’re fine.”
Now is the time to go our separate ways. But neither of us moves. Ellie’s looking up at me, waiting. She’s smoking me out with silence. If I go much longer without saying anything, it will become painfully awkward instead of just a little awkward. It’d be easy enough to stammer Okay, see you later and walk away, but my mouth and legs won’t cooperate.
“Actually,” I say, before I even mean to, “I keep chickening out of talking to your dad. I know my mom stopped doing the books for the restaurant after everything happened, but if your dad asked for her help again, I think she’d like that. Do you think you could suggest that?”
Ellie nods like it’s totally normal to ask your friend to ask her dad if he can ask your mom for accounting help. “Of course. I’ll bring it up with him subtly. Maybe that’ll sort of open the door between my dad and your mom. And, Jonah, please tell me if I can babysit or pick up some groceries or I don’t know what. Anything. I’d really like to help, if I can. And if you ever need to talk, really . . .”
“Thanks. We’re actually doing pretty well most days. It’s after Naomi and Silas leave that freaks me out. But Vivi keeps saying she might actually persuade her mom to stay in Verona Cove longer, so she might be around to help, too.”
Ellie smiles. “That would be great.”
“And thanks for coming up with ideas for the restaurant.” We’re inching apart now.
“It was fun. Think them over when you have a chance. I already showed them to my dad. We can talk about it on Thursday if you want. See ya!”
She’s a few steps away when I call out, “What’s happening Thursday?”
“Nothing. It’s just our next overlapping shift.”
I turn back as we walk away, and she does the same, waving at me. Maybe I should feel guilty for outing my mom without even running it by Naomi or Silas, but I don’t. I feel like we’ve added another person to our team. Or maybe just realized that there was someone else there all along.