My Parents Begged for My Execution on Live TV novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Brooke's Mother's Kitchen

Brooke's mother ran her kitchen from a loading dock behind a furniture warehouse.

It was a steel room with six burners, two ovens and a walk-in cooler, and she stood in the middle of it with a clipboard and a cleaver.

She was a short, hard woman with Brooke's brown eyes and a baker's forearms.

"This is your friend," she said.

"Yes, Mom."

"The one who can sear."

"She can cook," Brooke said. "I've eaten her food."

That was a lie, and Brooke told it well.

Her mother looked me up and down.

I wore Brooke's old chef's whites, a paper mask, and a cap pulled low over my forehead where the tape was.

My right hand was in a glove with the splint hidden underneath.

"What's wrong with your hand?"

"A door."

"Can you hold a pan?"

"With the left."

"Hmm." She turned the cleaver in her fingers. "I don't watch television. I've been in this kitchen since Sunday, I have a gala for three hundred on Wednesday, and my sauté cook quit yesterday."

"I can take the sauté station."

"Make me something."

She pointed me to a burner.

I made short ribs braised in red wine, the way my grandmother had made them.

I salted them and seared them hard and put them into the oven with onions and a bay leaf and a cup of stock.

She stood at my elbow for the whole hour without saying a word.

When I opened the oven door the whole kitchen smelled of fat and wine.

She ate a piece off the end of a wooden spoon.

"The main course Wednesday is a short rib," she said. "You're on it."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Be on time."

She went back to her clipboard.

Brooke walked me to the back door.

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