The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: From the Chef

Patrick walks out mid-dinner to answer his girlfriend, his brother Ciaran sits down in his chair, and when I go to collect my daughter, the girlfriend opens my mother-in-law's door holding her.

Ciaran came out through the swinging door with the towel still over his shoulder.

He was bigger than I remembered, or the room was smaller.

There were burn marks up both his forearms, old and shiny.

He stopped at our table and looked at his brother.

"Patrick."

"Look who's still flipping eggs," Patrick said.

"Somebody has to feed the vice presidents."

Ciaran turned to me, his expression tightening.

"Happy anniversary, Aileen."

"He knows what day it is," I said to Patrick. "That's one of you."

Patrick's phone buzzed on the tablecloth.

The screen lit up with a name and a little red heart.

Bria.

So that was her name.

Patrick picked it up right there, with me across the table and his brother standing over him.

"Hey, baby."

His voice went soft in a way I hadn't heard in years.

"No, it's handled. She's being weird about it. Give me twenty minutes."

He stood up and pulled his jacket off the chair.

He dropped two twenties next to the skillet.

"That should cover it."

"The chicken's thirty-four," Ciaran said.

Patrick didn't answer.

The bell over the door jingled behind him.

I sat there for a second with the whole room pretending not to look at me.

Then I picked up my fork and ate the mac and cheese.

I ate every bite of it.

When the chicken came, I ate that too, and the potatoes, and the little pile of greens on the side.

Ciaran pulled out Patrick's chair and sat down in it.

"You don't have to babysit me," I said.

"I'm not. My sous chef is mad at me, and this is the one table she won't come to."

A short woman in a hairnet glared at us through the pass.

"What did you do to her?"

"Told her the risotto was fine."

"Was it?"

"It was fine." He shrugged. "She wanted perfect."

I laughed, and it surprised both of us.

I scraped the last of the crust off the skillet.

"You put hot sauce in the crumbs," I said.

"That's how you make it."

"That's how I make it." I set the fork down. "Did Patrick tell you that?"

Ciaran looked at the skillet for a long moment.

"Something like that."

"I didn't think he'd remember."

He didn't answer that.

The sous chef rang the bell at the pass twice, hard.

"She's going to quit," I said.

"She quits every Friday. She's back Saturday at noon."

"Why did you come back?"

"Chicago got cold."

"It's Pittsburgh. It's cold here too."

"Different cold." His crooked front tooth showed when he smiled. "Here, I know which streets the plows skip."

"Why did you leave?"

The smile went away.

"Better knives," he said.

It was a lie, and he let me see it was a lie.

At nine, he walked me home.

I told him I'd walked those two blocks a thousand times, and he came anyway.

The leaves on Bryant Street were wet and stuck to my shoes.

He didn't fill the quiet, and I liked him for that.

Our house sat back from the sidewalk with the porch light on.

Red brick, a wide porch, and the white swing hanging at the end of it on its chains.

Ciaran stopped at the bottom of the steps.

He didn't come up.

He just looked at the swing.

"He got you the swing," he said quietly.

"I got me the swing. Patrick said it was a waste of three hundred dollars."

Ciaran's jaw moved.

He looked at the swing a while longer.

"Lock the door, Aileen," he said, and walked off down the street.

I stood on the porch with my keys in my hand.

Something about the way he said it sat wrong in my chest, and I couldn't say why.

I didn't go inside.

I got in my car and drove to Squirrel Hill to get my daughter.

His mother's house was lit up, every window gold.

There were three Mercedes in the drive and one little white convertible.

I rang the bell at ten o'clock exactly.

The door opened.

It wasn't his mother.

It was a young woman with a glossy blond blowout and very white teeth.

She had on his mother's flowered apron, the good one nobody was allowed to touch.

My daughter was asleep on her shoulder, red-brown curls stuck to her cheek, one rain boot dangling.

The woman smiled at me like I was the delivery.

"You must be Aileen," she said. "Don't worry. She's totally used to me."

She bounced Nellie a little and smoothed her curls.

"She calls me Lolo."

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