Chapter 4: Green Ink

"Kitchen," Kendrick said again, without turning around.

So I went.

Behind me I heard Leonard laugh, and a chair scrape, and Danielle saying, "Daddy, are we really leaving?"

The kitchen was loud and bright and nobody looked at me.

I stood by the walk-in with my hands shaking and wine drying on my knees.

Ten minutes later Kendrick came through the swinging doors.

"Go home," he said.

"What did he mean?"

"Go to your cottage. Ice your feet. You're on lunch tomorrow."

"Kendrick. What did my father leave you that I don't know about?"

He looked at me for a long second.

"A lot of work," he said.

Then he walked into the office behind the pastry station and shut the door.

I heard the lock turn.

I did not go home and ice my feet.

I sat on the narrow bed in cottage three in my uniform until the lights in the main house went out one by one.

The cottage smelled like bleach and somebody else's cigarettes.

There was a hook by the door for my apron.

At 12:50 I took Leonard's card out of the apron pocket.

Thorndike Hospitality. A Boston number in raised gold letters.

On the back, in blue pen, he'd written: "Anytime."

I put it in my bra.

At one o'clock I walked back across the kitchen garden.

The staff entrance code hadn't changed since I was sixteen.

Nobody had ever thought to change it, because nobody ever thought anyone would steal from my father.

The kitchen was dark and humming.

On the wall by the banquet captain's desk was a board of hooks with keys on them.

The master key was the brass one on the red ribbon.

It had been on the red ribbon my whole life.