I Left Him at the Altar to Hide Our Daughter, and Now He Owns the Inn Where I Cook novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Lobster Night
"Then we don't let them," I said.
Lawrence looked up from the closed laptop.
"Mara, it's nine hundred thousand dollars."
"I know what it is."
I took a pad off the pass and a pencil out of my bandana.
"Your father used to do a lobster boil on the dock. Every Thursday in August. Hattie told me."
"That was thirty years ago."
"She said the whole town came. Long tables down the lawn. Corn in the pot. Pie after."
"Nobody drives to Maine for pie," he said. Blair's words.
He almost smiled.
"They drive for mine," I said.
I wrote it across the top of the pad.
Harborlight Harbor Supper. Thursdays. One seating. Forty-five dollars.
He watched me write.
Then he took the pencil out of my hand and added a second night.
Saturdays.
The first one was the next Thursday.
The lobstermen sold to us off the boats at the dock price.
Two of them had been at the market when Lawrence climbed the church steps.
They wouldn't take more.
The sous chef and I boiled seawater in the big pots on the back landing.
We set four long tables end to end down the lawn from the porch to the seawall.
White paper on the tables. Mason jars of zinnias from the flower woman on the green.
Hattie came down Front Street at four with Poppy and a wagon full of pies.
Blueberry. Strawberry rhubarb. Peach.
And at the back of the wagon, covered in a clean towel, two lemon tarts with fresh blackberries pressed into the tops.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Left Him at the Altar to Hide Our Daughter, and Now He Owns the Inn Where I Cook are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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