1
Lydia
She could not stop crying, no matter what she did.
And it was all her grandmother's fault.
“Lydia!” Madge croaked over the video conference software they were using as Lydia learned to cook one of her grandmother's signature foods.
Fried green tomatoes.
“What?” The cabin Lydia shared with her guys, Mike and Jeremy, had a soaring ceiling in the combined kitchen-living room, with a great, long counter where Lydia could cook with abandon.
While her brother, Caleb, was the chef in the family, and their grandmother, Madge, ran a diner in Boston that was a stalwart tradition in that corner of the city, Lydia had never mastered some of the family's cherished dishes.
It was time.
Her grandma was getting old, and Lydia needed the connection. The engagement. The interaction.
But mostly, she needed to not be such a bad cook.
“You're turning it all into goo,” Madge chided, lips pursed in a tight line, head shaking with a motion that triggered instant shame in Lydia.
“I'm dredging! Just like you told me!” Reaching for her glass of Merlot, she took an extra long sip, using her other hand to move her long, dark braid off her shoulder and behind her, where it belonged.
“And why are you crying?” her grandmother demanded.
“The onions.” She sniffed, as if to prove a point.
But really because her nose burned.
“You didn't use my trick?”
“The bread-in-the-mouth trick?”
“No! The swim goggles!”
“You wear swim goggles when you chop onions, Grandma?”
“Yes! Caleb showed me a Hickory Dickory Dock about it.”
“A what?”
“You know. That website that shows people doing short videos?”
“You mean Tik Tok?”
“That's what I said!” Her grandmother's big, beaming face filled her tablet screen as Lydia stared at her first attempt at a slice of fried green tomato. Madge’s hair stuck out in crazy tufts, framing a wrinkled face that looked like a shrunken apple. Wise old eyes, ever sharp, watched Lydia through the screen.
“Grandma, the juicy tomato slice is too much. When I drag it through the breading, it just clumps.”
“Did you do the egg dip first?”
“I thought that was after the breading.”
“Nope! Egg, then breading.”
Listening carefully, Lydia tried it, using a fork to pierce the green flesh of the tomato slice, dunking it in the scrambled egg in a bowl, then dredging it, carefully plunking it on the baking tray.
“One down, nine to go!” she announced.
Caleb appeared on the screen with Madge. The two gave her a polite golf clap, Lydia’s younger brother looking smug, muscled forearms poking out from under a stained chef’s shirt.
“This isn't helping!”
“What, sis? We're applauding you.”
“You're mocking me!”
“Same thing in this family,” Madge joked, but while her words were sarcastic, her mannerisms were all infused with love and affection.
“When will we see you here at the campground, Grandma?” Lydia asked as she executed the dip and dredge perfectly for the second slice, wondering why she ever thought this was hard. In a large frying pan, onions and peppers sauteed in ghee, seasoned with Turkish oregano and lime, awaited a sprinkling of crumbled feta cheese, to be served with the fried green tomato slices.
She already made the “tiger sauce,” a blend of horseradish and sour cream.
By the time she was done, Jeddy's Diner's signature dish would be served in her own home up here in Verily, Maine.
And it would taste almost as good.
She might not be the first member of her family to get it right, but she would be the first in the cabin she shared with Jeremy and Mike, which made this an achievement that deserved to be celebrated.
With more Merlot.
“How many glasses is that?” Caleb teased her over the video window he appeared in, now connected on his phone, which was propped up somewhere on the kitchen line at the diner. A few years ago, he joined Madge as co-owner of the old restaurant that had been a part of the Charles' family life since, well...
Since Lydia could remember.
“My Merlot consumption is none of your business, Caleb. Speaking of things that aren't anyone's business, how's your love life?”
Madge cackled.
Caleb left the call, disappearing off camera. Lydia could hear the grumble, though, for a few seconds more.
Which meant she hit the right nerve.
“I don't know why that boy doesn't get up the guts to just kiss that poor best friend of yours and break the ice,” Madge said as she tipped a beer to her lips and took a sip. “And get your oil ready. What're you frying those tomatoes in?”
“Canola oil.”
“WHAT? That's a waste of good tomatoes. Get some bacon grease.”
“Bacon grease? Grandma, that'll clog your arteries.”
“Then maybe the only reason I'm still alive well into my eighties is because my arterial walls have been replaced with bacon fat, Lydia. Don't you dare use any canola oil!”
“We don't have leftover bacon grease.”
“Where's your can under the sink?”
“Grandma, I know you told us we should do that, but Mike was grossed out and said it's not sanitary.”
“Not sanitary? I do it and I'm fine!”
“You've had two heart attacks in the last five years.”
“Those were just blips. Not my fault Ed's so good in the sack my heart gets pushed to the limits.”
“Grandma! Gross!” That comment called for more wine.
“Says the woman who's screwing two men at the same time? Lydia, when did you become such a prude?”
“When you destroyed my eyes with onions and mocked me for it. I am this close,” Lydia said, holding her index finger and thumb a centimeter apart, “to joining Caleb and logging off!”
“You can't do that until you properly fry one of these. And not in that canola oil crap!”
With a peal of laughter, Lydia did as she was told, finding some avocado oil that barely passed Madge's muster. Lydia missed the old woman, more than she realized until now. They'd been roommates in Boston, an odd combination that had worked really, really well.
Until Lydia met Mike, then Jeremy, and the threesome decided to relocate to the family-owned campground and help run it.
And live in their custom-built cabin together.
When she’d met Mike and Jeremy, Mike had been the founder and CEO of Bournham Industries, the faceless, nameless megacorporation where she’d been a corporate drone. Working her way up the ladder had sucked.
Meeting Mike hadn’t, though the circumstances had been about as weird as could be. He was undercover for a reality television show, pretending to be a middle manager of his own company, and they’d fallen for each other.
Nothing like accidentally making love on camera for a billion people to watch.
Oops.
Jeremy was Mike’s best friend, and Mike had transferred her to Iceland, a fake assignment designed to get her out from under media scrutiny. He’d also sent Jeremy to watch over her.