Page 123 of Aftertaste

He cooked in silence, braced himself as he sprinkled on the dill.

But when Sergei Duhovny materialized before his son, he was smiling, pride shining through him like a beam.

The lines were deeper in his face now; Hunger lingered in his eyes, dulling their flame. The memories had dimmed in Kostya’s mind, so many precious moments with his father sacrificed for savory, for sweet, flavors he couldn’t access any other way. Still, he knew him. Recognized him. His heart did. His soul.

“Kostochka,” Sergei whispered, his name the sweetest in his father’s mouth.

“Papa.”

Sergei mussed his hair, held Kostya’s face in his penumbral hands.

“My son,” he said, tears welling in his sunken eyes. “My cherrystone. I knew you’d come. To play our game. To find my final taste.”

And Kostya broke down then, this answer too much, the key to all his doors.

He had held so tightly to his grief, had stoked his guilt for all those years, had prayed for his father’s forgiveness and yet had never seen his aftertastes for what they were. The answer he had needed. Not forgiveness, but acceptance. Proof that his father had seen him. Had understood. Not a gift, or a curse, but a game.Theirgame. Transformed by Death and sent him by his dad so they might meet again. Play one last round.

“Pechonka,” Kostya stammered through his tears. “Your taste.”

“Nyet!” his dad choked out, face streaked, too, with salt. “Love.”

It passed between them in a glance—the guilt and the apologies, mistakes they’d made, this love that had held fast through time, and space, and death. A hook. A tether. An unbreakable chain. A bond that would be something else now, leading Sergei to his future life.

“?????,” Kostya told his dad at last, handing him the plate of food, ready, after all this time, to let him go. “Eat.”

HE RESCUED EVERLEIGH,who hugged him tight, told him he’d better be good to her sister or she’d haunt him into the next life. He returned Baba Fira, who insisted that he try her borscht, a babushka until the end. He righted Dan Evans’s father. Stella’s mom.

Countless others that he didn’t know by name.

More than Kostya had anticipated.

Swarms of Hungry Ghosts had flooded through the tear, and Frankie tried to track them all now, keep them away from Maura as she fought to patch the veil.

“Like herding cats, man. But worse,” he told Kostya. “She’d better hurry.”

Kostya rushed to make their dishes, trying to staunch the bleed, these sharp new aftertastes assaulting him like chits on a Saturday night—overwhelming, relentless, no end in sight.

He cooked fried chicken. And congee. Schnitzel, and vegan Bolognese. Khasiko Bhutan. Salmonen croûte. Sawagani.Paella.Ptitim.So many dishes, so many ingredients, so many spirits waiting for his aid that he lost track of what he’d used. How little he had left. How few memories remained.

He was making birthday cake—an agony of ingredients, taking so much from him that he shuddered as he stirred—when he realized he’d forgotten his own name.

How strange, he thought, to have lost himself but still knowthis, how to cook, how to feed. Was there some dish, he wondered, somewhere, that might bring him back? A morsel to remind him? Perhaps on the other side, where he had come from.

The Living, after all, ate mostly to remember. They marked their lives in food.

In birthday cakes, and champagne toasts. In bowls of ketchup soup and Michelin-starred menus. In cups of coffee. In Happy Meals. In sides of fries. In Sunday dinners with Gigi or Yaya or Nai Nai or Ba.

To eat was to celebrate. Food was living, after all; food was love. It was how the Living coped. How they kept going. Shorthand for their entire lives.

But the Dead? This place? The Dead ate to forget.

To let go.

To taste, for one last time, that vivid spark of Life before they left it all behind. There was nomorefor the Dead, no second helping. Only a record that they might leave. A recipe.

A recipe could tell you who someone had been, what they had loved, the things that sustained them. It was a way for others to carry them along, to bring them back, to keep them close once they had gone. A way to never really die.

He could feel them now, the spirits yearning for his food. And he obliged, nourished them with dishes even as their preparation ate his memories away.

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