He Gave Her My Kitchen. I Took Everything. novel · Chapter 1 of 16
Chapter 1: Two Envelopes
Holly hands Neil her resignation and a divorce petition, trains her replacement in front of the line, and then a text meant for Brittany shows the girl in Holly's apron in Holly's own home kitchen.
I put two envelopes on my husband's desk and slid them toward him.
The top one said RESIGNATION in my own block letters.
The one underneath held a divorce petition.
Neil tore the first one open with his thumb.
He read one line and started to smile.
He didn't even look at the second envelope.
"Finally," he said.
He tipped his chair back until it creaked.
"Holly, babe. I've been waiting eight months for you to get here on your own."
Eight months.
I knew the exact night he meant.
He'd sat me down at our kitchen table at home and poured me a glass of wine first.
He said Ellsworth House was bleeding money.
He said a wife taking a paycheck from her husband's restaurant looked bad to the investors.
"It all goes in the same pot anyway," he'd said. "It's our money either way."
So my salary went from a hundred and forty thousand a year to nothing.
I didn't argue.
I kept working ninety hours a week.
I wrote every dish on the menu.
I haggled every supplier down to the penny.
I trained every cook on that line with my own hands.
We passed every health inspection with a perfect score.
Six weeks after that talk, Neil hired Brittany Lowry.
She was twenty-four.
She had one year of culinary school and forty thousand followers.
She laughed with her hand on my husband's arm.
Neil said she was there to take some weight off me.
Now I stood in his office in my stained whites and watched him look happier than he had in years.
"I won't be giving two weeks," I said.
"I'll hand everything over to Brittany this afternoon. After that, I'm gone."
He grabbed a pen.
He signed the bottom of the page without reading the rest.
His hand moved fast.
"You've been fried for a long time," he said, suddenly generous. "Go rest. Figure out who you are."
He meant he was glad he didn't have to fire me.
He couldn't have, anyway.
Not without a fight.
Every supplier contract had my signature on it.
The health permit had my name on it as the certified manager.
Neil had never read any of it.
He pushed the signed letter back across the desk.
The second envelope was still lying there, sealed.
He set his coffee mug on top of it.
"Go on," he said. "Brittany's waiting."
The kitchen went quiet when I walked in.
Seven cooks stopped chopping at once.
Katie, my sous chef, put her knife down very slowly.
"Chef?"
"I'm leaving today," I said. "Brittany's taking over."
Brittany came out of the dry storage with her phone already raised.
Her ring light was clipped to the top of it.
"Oh my gosh, you guys, this is the moment," she told the phone. "The official handover."
"Put that away," Katie said.
"It's content," Brittany said. "Neil approved it."
I walked her through the station list.
I showed her the prep sheets, the order days, the walk-in rotation.
She nodded at the camera instead of at me.
When I got to the duck, she yawned.
"I know the duck. It's in the binder."
"The binder's a guide," I said. "It isn't the whole thing."
"Babe, it's honey on a bird." She smiled at her screen. "I think I'll manage."
Somebody on the line snorted.
It wasn't at me.
Brittany didn't notice.
Then she walked to the hook by the pass where my chef coat hung.
The one with my name stitched over the heart.
EXECUTIVE CHEF HOLLY ELLSWORTH.
She took it down and held it against her chest.
"I'll have them unpick the name," she said. "It's a really nice coat. It'd be a waste."
The kitchen went silent again.
Katie started to come around the counter.
I put my hand up and she stopped.
"Keep it," I said. "I've got others."
Brittany's eyes glittered.
"Aw. You're being so mature about this. Say bye to everyone, Holly."
I rolled up my knives.
I shook hands with every cook on the line, one at a time.
Katie hugged me so hard my ribs hurt.
"This is wrong," she whispered. "You know this is wrong."
"I know," I said.
I walked out the back door into the alley with my knife roll under my arm.
I'd built that kitchen.
My father's life insurance had paid for the range, the hood, the walk-in, every copper pot.
Two hundred and ten thousand dollars.
I'd just handed all of it to a girl with a ring light.
I got into my car.
I didn't start it.
My phone buzzed on the seat beside me.
It was Neil.
It was a photo.
For one stupid second I thought he was sending an apology.
Then I saw the picture.
It was Brittany.
She was standing at a stove in a navy linen apron, smiling over her shoulder.
It wasn't the restaurant's stove.
It was mine.
My range at home, the one I'd saved two years for.
My grandmother's cast iron pan hung on the wall behind her head.
My apron was tied around her waist.
Under the photo, Neil had typed a message.
"She's out. Tonight we christen the real kitchen. Wear the apron again."
Three dots appeared.
Then the message vanished.
Unsent.
He'd picked the wrong name.
I already had the screenshot.
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