The Secret Ingredient Read online

  Also available from KD Fisher

  Love on the Hudson

  A Christmas Cabin for Two

  A Little Rebellion

  Content Warning

  The Secret Ingredient deals with topics some readers might find difficult, including family alienation, mentions of homophobia, and religious trauma.

  The Secret Ingredient

  KD Fisher

  For Cooper, the only man I’ll ever need

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Excerpt from The Love Study by Kris Ripper

  Chapter One

  Adah

  All my life I’ve been running. Running through the woods so fast I thought I could leave myself clean behind. Running from the reverend anytime he got that mean look in his eyes. Running to get free.

  Now I’m setting down roots. Roots that will grow stronger and deeper with time. Roots that no storm can wash away.

  I glanced around the apartment. Our new home. Sunlight bouncing off the yellow walls and settling down on the black and white checked floors. Sloped, slightly uneven ceiling in the living room. Exposed brick wall behind the couch. Windows thrown wide open, filmy white curtains drifting in the warm breeze. A heavy door with a heavier lock I checked three times before I signed the lease.

  “Mom!” Peter poked his little blond head through the bedroom door. “This whole room is really mine?”

  “Yep.” I shook the suds off my hands and grinned. “All yours. But you better keep it clean. Understood?” A shudder rocked though me at how much I sounded like my mama.

  “I will. It’s so cool to have my own room.” With that, he disappeared back into the tiny bedroom, door closing softly behind him. I loved the sound of my son’s voice, still high and sweet and colored with the nasal Midwest accent so different from my Ozark tongue.

  It was time he had a room of his own. Living in an efficiency studio in Chicago had been fine when he was a toddler, and tolerable when he was too little to be bothered by the lack of personal space. But next year Peter would be ten. He needed room to breathe. We both did.

  And we’d found it in Maine. In this second-floor walk-up so close to the ocean I could smell the salt air. The place wasn’t exactly big, but it was affordable and clean and only a ten-minute walk from the restaurant. I didn’t mind that I’d be sleeping on the pull-out couch and waking up at all hours to the chattering of gulls and drunken sounds of men arguing in the bar next door. Drawing in a long, slow breath, I plunged my hands back into the soapy water and resumed scrubbing the kitchen floor.

  Tomorrow I would start my new job. Head chef at Bella Vista, a fine-dining Mediterranean venture opened by the restaurant group I’d spent the last five years in Chicago busting my tail for. Riccardo was taking a big chance on me, and I was determined to do him proud. Smiling softly to myself, I lifted my eyes to my freshly pressed chef’s whites hanging on the bathroom door. I’d seen the pictures of the kitchen. My kitchen. I’d scrolled through them hundreds of times trying to picture myself running the operation. Brand-new and bigger than any space I’d worked in before. Gleaming pots and pans, top-of-the-line range, everything open to the tastefully decorated dining room. I wanted to squeal with excitement but bit my lip and started in on scrubbing the baseboards.

  I lost myself in the methodical work of cleaning and nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of two loud raps on the glass pane of my front door. My eyes squeezed shut and my whole body stilled.

  Squaring my shoulders, I stood tall and let my gaze shudder over to the door. All my breath rushed out of my body and a smile tugged at my mouth. A middle-aged lady with black rimmed glasses and shoulder length brown hair beamed at me and lifted a hand in greeting.

  “Hi there.” I tried not to sound too breathless as I yanked the door open. It stuck a little bit but that was just fine with me.

  “You must be Adah. So nice to meet you in person. I’m Vanessa.” The woman thrust a bouquet of sunflowers into my hands and let herself right on in.

  It took my whirring brain a moment to catch up. Right. Vanessa Tyler. My landlady. The sweet woman who’d spent the last month filling my email inbox with helpful tips about my new city in Maine. The fairy godmother who, upon discovering my single-mother status, dropped the rent by four hundred dollars a month. I wanted to hug her but that really wasn’t my style.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am.” I rubbed the back of my neck nervously and a few drops of soapy water slithered under my T-shirt.

  “Ma’am nonsense. I do love that accent though. Where’d you get that? I thought you moved from Chicago.”

  “Sure did.” I bit my lip to hold back the instinctive ma’am I’d been raised to keep in my mouth. “But I grew up in Missouri.” I tried for a smile. “You’ve got quite the accent yourself.”

  Vanessa laughed, a hearty chuckle, and batted the air with her hands. “Well, that’s because I’m from so far north I practically grew up in Canada. You’re lucky I’m not speaking goddamn French.” She winked and glanced around the apartment. “You getting settled in okay? Place looks great. Nice to know you’re clean. The last guy was a real disaster. Pizza boxes stacked as high as my shoulder.” This word was pronounced without the final r. “Where’s your young man?”

  Peter, never one to pass up a grand entrance, burst out of the bedroom and waved at Vanessa. “I’m here.” My boy wasn’t shy, I had to give him that.

  “You certainly are. And what a handsome young man! What’s your name, sir?”

  “Peter. Peter Campbell. Nice to meet you.”

  “And you’re polite! I’m Vanessa.” She extended her hand and Peter shook it without hesitation. “I live right downstairs. You liking South Bay so far, kiddo?”

  Peter nodded and I took a moment to admire my son’s earnest politeness. I’d been busy when he was little, swamped with culinary school and work, but he still turned out sweeter than any of my siblings despite all the manners forced on us. “It’s really pretty. I think I might miss Chicago, though. It seems a little boring here.”

  “Well how about tomorrow I take you to the beach while your mom here gets cooking?”

  Peter’s blue eyes flashed wide and I could practically hear the please, Moms radiating off him.

  I pressed my lips together. As nice as Vanessa seemed, I didn’t know the woman from Adam. I’d hired a nice woman with state background checks from a reputable nanny service to take care of Peter for the two months until he started school. “Oh, you don’t have to do that. I’ve got a sitter. You’ve been too kind already.”

  She nodded seriously. “Look, I get it, Adah. You don’t know me. I’m just your landlady. I could be a total weirdo. But I was the principal at Water Street Elementary for almost two decades. I can give you references, and I won’t charge you.” Her expression was soft, the sort of open kindness I’d always looked for in my own mother’s eyes.

  “Really, you don’t have to do that.
You’ve done so much as it is.”

  “Mom,” Peter whined, “I wanna go with Ms. Vanessa. The beach.” He cast a wistful look out the window.

  Guilt twisted in my stomach. After two full days of driving, retrieving the keys from underneath the flowerpot Vanessa described in great detail in one of her emails, and collapsing onto the couch for a fitful few hours of sleep, I hadn’t exactly prioritized fun excursions for Peter in our new hometown. When we’d discussed moving up to Maine, we’d spent hours looking at slideshows of hiking trails, lighthouses, and wildlife in the frozen north. So far all we’d done was clean, eat pizza, and walk around the corner to buy light bulbs. Not exactly thrilling stuff for a nine-year-old. Or for a thirty-one-year-old, for that matter.

  Vanessa tapped away on a giant smartphone. “Okay. I just sent you a list of five references you can call. Teachers I worked with, admins in the district, and my best friend Sally. Oh, and the pastor at my church for good measure.”

  I kept my face neutral even as her final phrase lit up every one of my nerves like fire tearing through dry brush. Deep breath in, hold it, push all the air out.

  Finally, after Peter crossed the small kitchen to tug on the hem of my T-shirt, I relented. “Alright. Well if you really don’t mind, I can check in on your references. I’ll text you the number for the restaurant and my friend Jay’s number in case you can’t get a hold of me. I have to get over there first thing tomorrow to meet with management. Is around seven thirty okay for you?”

  It would be a godsend not to have to pay the sitter the agreed upon fifteen dollars an hour. Money was stretched tight as it was. But guilt reared its very familiar head at the thought of not paying Vanessa anything to watch Peter. Maybe I could at least arrange some kind of barter, free dinner once a week or something. Then fear climbed on top of guilt, just as familiar and just as unwelcome. What if despite the references and sweet veneer, Vanessa turned out to be a bad egg? What kind of person just agreed to help someone like this? I needed to move my body, burn off some of this frantic energy buzzing through me. I bit my lip hard. This would be fine. Everything was fine.

  “Sweetheart.” It took me a long moment to realize Vanessa was speaking to me, not to my son. “I know this is a lot. New job. New place. I understand how hard it can be to start over. Let me help. Please.”

  I wanted to argue. I didn’t need help. Not from her. Not from anyone. Instead, I forced my tight muscles to relax just a little. Relief seeped into my limbs and the sensation was strange. I usually only felt this way for a few minutes after a particularly punishing run or when I lost myself to the rhythm of work in the kitchen.

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  You could have knocked me over with a feather as I stepped into my new kitchen the next morning. My kitchen. Mine.

  No pixels on a tablet screen could have prepared me for the gleaming expanse of stainless steel and clean white tile. A giant copper hood fan arced over the space and a wide, polished concrete pass separated the kitchen from the front of house. Everything smelled new, like a hardware store. Like possibility. My ears heated and my eyes fizzed. I squeezed them shut, hoping this wouldn’t all disappear.

  Next to me, Riccardo, the owner of Zest Restaurant Group, and Sean, the general manager of Bella Vista, were talking a mile a minute about...something. I should have been listening and chiming in. This mattered to me as much as it mattered to them. More, maybe. For Riccardo, Bella Vista’s failure would mean a huge financial loss and a disastrous business gamble in a new market. For Sean, who had a fancy-pants track record managing Zest’s fine-dining spots in Manhattan, failure would mean personal and professional disgrace. For me, Bella Vista had to succeed. I’d uprooted my family, left the only city—heck, the only kitchen—that had really felt like home. And when I did something, I did it right.

  Opening a high-end, high-concept Mediterranean seafood restaurant in a city known best for chowder and lobster rolls was a risky proposition. I was still reeling from Riccardo’s decision to hire me for this of all jobs.

  Of course, in a lot of ways it made sense. I’d spent the last three years as the sous-chef at Café Eloise, his chic French small plates restaurant. I’d worked my tail off for him. And when the head chef disappeared in a cloud of cigarette smoke and expletives, I’d taken over for a few months, pushing the restaurant out of traditional chicken liver pate territory into serving creative takes on Provençal classics. I revamped the menu and we ended up winning a few small, city-magazine awards. Our food was artistic without sacrificing flavor. We had a solid group of regulars and tourists alike. And I knew how to run a kitchen.

  When Riccardo found out I’d grown up fishing on the streams in Missouri and knew how to debone a trout with my eyes closed, he called me into his office for a chat about my future. And when he discovered I was looking for a change of scenery, he offered me the job in Maine on the spot. Executive chef. I wouldn’t admit it to anyone, barely to myself, but I was nervous. The stakes were high. Besides, at the end of the day I was still more at home frying up catfish than I was whipping up lobster gnocchi. But I was determined to create a delicious, innovative menu that would do us all proud. Bella Vista would be a success.

  “Adah, does that sound agreeable?” Sean asked. His voice carried the impatient edge of someone who was aware he was being tuned out.

  “Oh yeah. Absolutely.” I nodded curtly and met his eyes. Jay, my best friend and the pastry chef at Café Eloise, had warned me that Sean could be difficult and that he didn’t always respect women in the kitchen.

  Riccardo chuckled warmly. “You were spaced out, darling. Sean and I thought the three of us should take today to personally assess some of the other fine-dining spots in the area.”

  I perked up. I’d done thorough research on the local competition. There was a lot. The city had been named a culinary destination to watch by a number of food publications in the past few years. Although we would be on the higher end of the offerings, there were a few I wanted to see in person. One in particular.

  “We’ll start with The River Street Café. Then I want to take a look at Commonwealth Provisions. And what do you think, Ric, should we bother with Osteria Mina or have they gone too far downhill?” Sean shifted his body just enough to make it a two-man conversation.

  I took a step toward him.

  Riccardo looked to me. “What do you think, chef?”

  I bit my lip to hide my smile. “I’d like to check them out. See the space and maybe talk to a few people in the front of house if they’d be willing. I think it will be good to start off on the right foot with folks.” I paused, looking from Sean, who had crossed his arms, to Riccardo, who was nodding along vigorously. “And what about The Yellow House? I really want to see what they’re doing over there.”

  I didn’t mention that my interest in the local-coffee-shop-turned-award-winning-culinary-destination had a whole lot to do with a profile I’d read a few months earlier of Beth Summers, the laid-back owner. Waiting in line at the grocery store, I’d picked up an issue of a splashy food magazine specifically because the cover image had caught my eye—a gorgeous woman laughing with her head thrown back, a tumble of auburn curls, a decidedly non-cheffy lavender dress, a hodgepodge of crystal necklaces.

  Then I’d flipped to her interview. I’d been fascinated with her business philosophy even if it didn’t make a lick of sense to me. In theory, using only local ingredients, ensuring a competitive salary and full health benefits for all staff, and cooking almost everything in a wood burning oven sounded amazing. In the cold reality of the restaurant world, though, those things were almost impossible to do. Still, when she breezily mentioned her dedication to visibility for queer female chefs in a male-dominated industry, I’d actually bought a copy of the dang magazine so I could read the full interview. Several times.

  Riccardo made one of his dramatic affirmative noises, whereas Sean�
��s brows crashed together. “That tiny place in the middle of nowhere?” Sean practically scoffed. “I don’t think we need to worry about them. Overhead like that they’ll close next month.”

  I tried to rein in my prickly, only-sister-among-six-brothers instincts and kept my voice as even as possible. “Last year alone they were named the best restaurant in Maine and won a Martin Williams Award. I think they might be worth checking out.”

  “Yes.” Riccardo clapped his hands and the sound echoed through the cavernous kitchen. “We will go there first.”

  Chapter Two

  Beth

  The flames wandered over the kindling, sparking golden as the rich scent of wood smoke filled the kitchen. It was early still, the sunlight weak and soft. Outside, the clear crack of Andrew chopping wood mingled with the cries of chickadees and jays. Inside, I was alone. I drew in a deep, steady breath to greet the dawn.

  I was exhausted. The night before had been long, with a private event yawning long past midnight. The morning came too early and too busy. My to-do list snaked through my mind unrelenting: update the menus online, proof the boules, fill the tart shells, pick up the blueberries from my dad, answer at least fifty emails, follow up with vendors... Realistically I needed to hire someone else. But the last two guys I’d brought on didn’t have the right energy. They cut corners and didn’t connect with our mission. The recent onslaught of guests and publicity meant, however, that Andrew, Nina, and I were constantly exhausted. It wasn’t sustainable.

  Okay, so priority number one: create a new job listing to post on Craigslist that might attract someone more attuned. Really, what I needed was another me. Or the ability to work endless hours with no sleep and no personal time. Or to pack up and leave this whole operation behind in favor of a beach in Tulum. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d been to yoga or taken Hamlet on a hike. The last time I’d dreamed of anything but invoices and health inspections.