He Gave Her My Kitchen. I Took Everything. novel · Chapter 2 of 16

Chapter 2: The Real Kitchen

Holly walks in on Neil and Brittany at her stove, Neil laughs at the divorce and swears she'll leave with nothing, and her duck farmer calls to say Neil wants the bills sent to Brittany.

I sat in the car and looked at the screenshot until the screen went dark.

Then I drove home.

It took twenty-two minutes.

I didn't cry once.

Neil's Audi was in the driveway.

Behind it was a little white Jeep with a sticker on the back window.

COOK WITH BRITTANY.

I let myself in through the garage.

The house smelled like burnt sugar.

Music was playing in the kitchen, something with a lot of bass.

I heard Brittany laugh.

I heard my husband say, "No, no, more. Drown it."

I walked down the hall and stopped in the doorway.

Brittany was at my range with a pan of honey smoking over high heat.

She was wearing my navy apron.

Nothing else.

Neil was behind her, his arms around her waist, his chin on her shoulder.

Her phone was propped against my knife block, recording.

Brittany saw me first.

She didn't scream.

She reached over and stopped the video.

"Oh," she said. "Awkward."

Neil turned around.

For one second his face went gray.

Then he put it back together.

"Holly. You're supposed to be at your sister's."

"I don't have a sister, Neil."

"Your friend's, then. Whatever. You said you were leaving."

"I said I was leaving the restaurant."

The honey was burning.

Black smoke curled up into the hood.

I walked past them both and turned off the flame.

The pan was my grandmother's.

Brittany had put it over the high burner with nothing in it but sugar.

The seasoning was scorched gray all the way across.

Seventy years that pan had lasted.

It took her one night.

"You ruined it," I said.

Brittany shrugged and pulled a throw blanket off the couch to wrap around herself.

"It's a pan. Neil said you had like six."

"Go upstairs, Britt," Neil said.

"No." She sat on a stool at my island and crossed her legs. "I want to hear this."

Neil rubbed his face.

"Okay. Look. I was going to tell you."

"When?"

"When things settled. You were so burned out. I didn't want to pile on."

I laughed.

It came out sharp and short.

"You cut my pay to nothing so you could pay her."

"That's not what happened."

"How much do you pay her, Neil?"

He didn't answer.

Brittany answered for him.

"Eight a month," she said, smiling. "Consulting."

Eight thousand dollars a month.

Out of my salary.

For six months.

I reached into my bag and took out the second envelope.

I'd picked it up off his desk on the way out.

His coffee ring was still on it.

I dropped it on the island in front of him.

"You didn't open this one."

Neil tore it open this time.

He read the first page.

Then he laughed, loud and long, and handed it to Brittany.

"She's divorcing me," he said. "Babe. She's divorcing me."

Brittany laughed too.

"With what money?" Neil said.

He came around the island toward me.

"This house is in my name. The restaurant is in my name. You haven't had a paycheck in eight months. You don't have a cent I didn't give you."

"I put two hundred and ten thousand dollars into that kitchen."

"You put it into our marriage. Which you're walking out of." He spread his hands. "Go ahead. Take the knives. That's what you came with."

Brittany held up her glass of my wine.

"And you did say it, Holly. On camera. 'Keep it.'"

She smiled at me over the rim.

"You gave me your kitchen. You can't take it back just because you're sad."

I looked at the two of them.

At my apron on her body.

At my husband's hand resting on her knee now, not even hiding.

I went to the drawer by the stove where I kept my grandmother's recipe book.

Green cloth cover, soft as felt from seventy years of hands.

The drawer was empty.

"Where is it?"

Brittany smiled into her glass and said nothing.

"Where's June's book, Neil?"

"No idea," he said. "You probably lost it. You lose everything."

I went to the wall and took down the ruined pan.

"Seriously?" Neil said. "You're taking a broken pan?"

"I'm taking what's mine."

"Nothing's yours," he said. "Get that through your head."

I walked upstairs.

I packed one suitcase.

When I came back down, they'd turned the music back on.

Brittany was laughing in the kitchen.

Neil followed me to the front door.

"You'll be back in a week," he said. "Begging to work the line. And I'll let you, too. Minimum wage."

I opened the door.

My phone rang in my pocket.

The screen said it was my produce supplier.

He raised every duck we'd ever served at Ellsworth House.

He'd never called me after nine at night in five years.

"Holly," he said. "I just got a weird call from your husband."

I stood on the porch with my suitcase.

Neil was leaning in the doorway, listening.

"He says starting Monday I invoice a Miss Brittany Lowry. He says she's chef now and I answer to her." He cleared his throat. "Is that right?"

Neil smiled at me.

"Tell him, Holly."

I looked him right in the eye.

"No," I said. "It isn't right. Stop the truck."

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