Page 128 of Only Mine
No face. No name. No identifying information except?—
I tap on Wrenley’s profile and scroll frantically, looking for it. The thumbnail appears halfway down her feed: a close-up of a cutting board, a knife, with my tattooed forearm just visible at the edge of the frame.
Four hundred thousand likes.
Holy fuck.
I tap on the video, first noticing the caption:This carbonara made me believe in emotional support carbs again.I’d watched the video when she first posted it, when it was at something like two hundred views, and I was forced to admit that she is onesavvy creator who knows how to trigger views without being obvious.
This time, though, I head straight to the comments.
My coffee mug freezes halfway to my mouth. I scroll through, a sinking feeling spreading through my chest.
Anyone notice the knife technique? That’s professional level.
Those forearms are making me feel things I shouldn’t before 9 a.m.
Did anyone else catch the tiny burn scar on his left wrist? Classic chef mark.
That’s a $300 Japanese knife. This isn’t some rando boyfriend.
I work in a restaurant and THOSE ARE MICHELIN HANDS. I’d bet my entire paycheck.
I’m comparing the tattoos to every chef in the northeast with ink. Will report back.
I scroll faster, my heartbeat rising to a staggering level.
After closing the app, I set my phone face down on the counter, breathing through my nose.
They know.
Fuck me, they’re going to know.
The hot coffee in my hand suddenly feels like acid, burning through my palm. I set it down before I lob it through the window.
Michelin hands. Chef Daddy. Four hundred thousand people analyzing my fucking wrist bones.
I rub my thumb over the burn scar they’d noticed, a souvenir from my first job when I was sixteen and thought I was invincible. Now it’s a beacon for internet sleuths with too much time on their hands.
It suddenly dawns on me how Wrenley directed me that day.Go slower, let me see the knife, hold the yolk between your fingers. At the time, I thought her taking control was sexy and irresistible, but it’s taking on a different meaning now. She’d said people loved food prep videos. That was her reasoning. Not “I want to use your chef credentials to boost my engagement,” even though, clearly, that’s what she’s done.
Wrenley wasn’t just capturing a moment. She wascuratingme.
And then, my worst nightmare comes true. A new comment appears at the top.
Wait, isn’t she in that town where Bernard Toussaint opened his restaurant? The chef who disappeared from France after his wife died?
My stomach drops through the goddamn floor.
I scroll frantically through the thread, watching as the speculation builds in real time. Someone’s already replied with a link to an oldNew York Timesprofile. Another is posting screenshots from C’est Trois’s website, which doesn’t even have pictures of me, just the restaurant interior.
The walls are closing in. I tap on Wrenley’s profile again, noticing things I missed before. She never tags the town and carefully crops her backgrounds so that there are no identifying landmarks, but occasionally slips, leaving just enough for a dogged viewer to figure out where she is. The dock by the lake or the bookstore’s window reflecting Main Street, though it’s blurred.
Little breadcrumbs. Little clues.
Ivy stirs on the bench, mumbling something aboutrainbows before settling back to sleep. I look at her peaceful face, at the dark hair that’s so like mine, at the innocence I’ve fought tooth and nail to protect.
Three years of careful obscurity. Three years of building a life of privacy and safety for Ivy, so she could grow up without the dark cloud of her mother’s death, of the interest of the press, and the over-glorified fame of her father.
