Page 290 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
I scoot onto my knees and slice through the tape holding the box closed.
The contents of the box smell a tiny bit musty, but mostly they smell like herbs and spices and olive oil. I pull out the kitchen utensils first. A manual hand mixer with a faded turquoise handle. A set of wooden spoons with leaves and vines carved into the handles. A rolling pin. I hold the rolling pin and close my eyes, a sense of deep loss washing over me.
I didn’t know this woman like I should have, and I’ll always regret it.
Lennox picks up the spoons. “These are beautiful,” he says, running his hands over the intricate carvings.
“I remember those,” I say softly. “Her grandfather made them for her.”
At the bottom of the box, there’s a stack of notebooks. I pull them out, opening the first one and flipping through the pages. I recognize my mother’s slanted handwriting. A lot of what’s written is in French, but there’s English, too. Notes written in the margins, measurements, conversions. There are also illustrations of food—beautiful drawings.
I run my fingertips over a bunch of strawberries sketched below a recipe for frasier—a traditional French sponge cake. “I had no idea she could draw like this.”
Lennox holds out a hand. “May I?” I hand him the book and pick up the next one, and we fall into an easy silence as we flip through the pages.
Half an hour later, we’ve moved to the couch, Lennox sitting on one end while I lay with my head in his lap, my feet propped up on the armrest on the opposite end.
There are some beautiful recipes in Mom’s notebooks, but aside from those, my mother is also an incredible storyteller. My heart is swinging from one emotion to the next, stretching, aching, longing for a relationship I can’t have back, and yet somehow still grateful that I at least have this part of her.
“Hey, Tatum?” Lennox shifts, and I look up to see his expression marred with concern.
I sit up. “What is it?”
“Did your parents ever cook together?”
“Yeah. All the time when I was little.”
“But your mom was never involved in your dad’s show? Or his restaurant?”
“No. The restaurant didn’t come untilafterthe show. But I don’t think she was involved with either. I feel like I remember her not liking the idea of being on camera. Why?”
“Um.” Lennox clears his throat awkwardly. “I mean, I could be wrong. But this recipe—it sounds like your dad’s bouillabaisse.” He holds out the notebook.
I take it, my eyes quickly scanning the recipe. They still serve Dad’s bouillabaisse at Le Vin, so I immediately recognize the ingredients and ratios. “I mean, that’s not that weird, right? They were married. They probably made it together a hundred times.”
Lennox runs a hand across his face. “Okay but turn the page.”
On the next page, there’s a recipe for sole meunière that’s also identical to what we serve at Le Vin.
“There’s a few more,” he says gently.
I scoff. “What, did you pull up the menu?”
When he doesn’t answer, I look up and see his phone sitting on his knee. Hedidpull up the menu.
“Look, it just seems a little coincidental,” he says. “You could be right though. They were married. Maybe she shared all her recipes and was totally fine with him taking them on the show and serving them in his restaurant.”
“Of course she was okay with it,” I say, but doubt is already niggling at the back of my mind. I toss the notebook onto the floor in front of me. “Maybe she wrote the recipes downaftershe and my dad discovered them together.”
Even as I make the argument, I know it isn’t true. Many of the recipes contain pages and pages of notes—stories about where they came from, who Mom learned them from. The recipes themselves aren’t necessarily dated, but the stories are, and they all predate me, even Bree and Daniel.
I do some quick math. They predate my parents’ marriage, too.
Lennox watches as I flip through the pages looking for something—anything—that might prove otherwise. But there’s nothing.
I sit back with a huff, my heart pounding.
“So she must have been fine with him using them,” I finally say.
