Shea put down her bag in its usual spot, doubly embarrassed by Delilah’s acknowledgment of how much time she’d put in. Shea was retrospectively unsurprised the side-gig designed to serve as a respite from crushing loneliness had become a lifeline she depended on. She needed a friendly face, especially after last night.
“What are we on?” Shea wondered aloud, honestly having lost track. The day before felt like eons ago.
“We were gonna brainstorm more salads.”
Delilah didn’t need to motion to what was on her cutting board, nor did she need to rehash how the two women had revamped the Caprese. It was another one that came down to the ingredients that were used. Though the order specs had been all wrong, Silvio had impressive access to nationwide inventory. Already, the menu was transformed.
“I’d go for a buttermilk fried chicken salad,” Shea kicked in easily, dipping into her bag for her laptop and getting ready to take her usual seat. She hadn’t stopped to make herself breakfast or even coffee and she was eager to have a bite of her bun.
“Fried chicken is easy enough to make on short order, and bound to be a crowd pleaser. People will feel good about ordering a salad, but the salt and crunch of the chicken will make it feel like a treat.”
Shea thought twice about sitting down, and instead walked toward the other side of the kitchen to the small fridge below a prep counter that they used for the desserts. She reached into the fridge, pulled out a carton of whole milk and poured herself a glass to have with her morning bun.
“I cannot fry chicken,” Delilah said with emphasis. She’d lifted up her cutting board and was using the back of her knife to scrape piles of ribboned basil onto a paper towel.
“Anyone can fry chicken,” Shea protested. “It’s seriously not a big deal, especially if you’re frying off the bone. I’m telling you—I’ve done it a thousand times.”
Delilah’s hands stopped moving and her eyes went a little wide at the same moment Shea raised the glass to her lips.
“That’s the first time you’ve admitted you know how to cook.”
Shea’s glass stopped mid-sip when she realized what she’d said. It was one of her half-truths. Delilah went back to her basil.
“Not that I’m complaining,” Delilah was quick to say. “Whatever you want to call what you know is totally saving our bacon. It’s just … I’ve always found that “no cooking” story a little hard to believe.”
Shea couldn’t be mad at Delilah for her directness. The big, pink elephant was in the room. It had been more and more present every day in the two weeks that she’d been working at The Spoon.
“I never said I can’t cook—I only said I don’t. Once upon a time, cooking was something I was forced to do.”
“Your parents’ restaurant?” Delilah recalled.
“My dad’s restaurant, really,” Shea finally revealed. “A southern food place outside of Chicago.”
Delilah stopped again, this time to throw Shea a little smile. “Which explains why you know how to fry chicken.”
Shea coaxed the sticker on the pastry box to open.
“He grew up in South Carolina working in the kitchen his mother ran out of her house. Officially, it didn’t exist.”
“And unofficially?” Delilah asked in the patient voice of somebody who was curious to hear the story.
“Unofficially, she made more money under the table running a restaurant out of her back door than my grandfather made at his day job of twenty years.”
Shea picked up a bun, suddenly less hungry than she had been a minute before. She hadn’t talked about her father’s restaurants—all the Lola’s Kitchens—in ten years. Between Tasha and Delilah these past weeks, she’d mentioned it twice. Her promise to Tasha about approaching her father for testimony had borne no fruit. Every time she’d come close to calling, she’d chickened out.
“She fried catfish and chicken, served shrimp and grits, baked corn bread and rolls…she even had a barbecue pit. And her pound cake … it was legendary. The way she ran it wasn’t legal, but people looked the other way.”
There was no way for Shea to tell the story without remembering the scores of times her own father had told it—with some mixture of anguish and pride.
“Why didn’t she ever open a sit-down place? You know—make it official?” Delilah asked.
This was the part of the story that had always made her father’s face turn dark. “It was the fifties in the deep south. No bank was gonna give a business loan to a black woman.”
“So your father grows up and opens the restaurant your grandmother never could.”
“Actually…” Shea hated this part. “He helped her start over in a new place after she got run out of town.”
By then, Delilah had stopped cooking altogether, and she listened with rapt attention to the tale. Her jaw slacked a little at that last bit.
“Suspicious fire,” Shea explained. “There were other things—smaller things and even a few direct threats. They came through when her kitchen started doing too well.”
“Shit…” Delilah breathed.
Shea took a bite of her morning bun a second after responding, “Yeah.”
Shea chewed thoughtfully for a long minute. Delilah joined her in eating a bun.
“So your dad shoved the family business down your throat.”
Shea nodded. “Other kids hung out with their friends after school. I went straight from school to work and I stayed there until we closed. My homework didn’t get done until all the guests were gone—until the floors were being mopped and the kitchens were being cleaned. The weekends were even worse. There were times I had to wait tables and serve kids I went to school with, including boys I liked. It was awesome.”
“So you got the hell out of there as fast as you could and swore off cooking forever!” Delilah raised the uneaten portion of her bun with a flourish. It lightened the mood with a dramatic flair that made Shea glad.
“Yup. Moved to New York the day I turned eighteen. Got as far away as I could from that life and that town. Twelve years later, here I am.”
Delilah went back to cooking but gave a sad little smirk. “Your reasons for leaving are better than mine. I left Sapling for a guy who promised me the sun, the moon and the stars.”
“Uh-oh,” Shea grimaced. “He sounds like trouble.”
“Him cheating on me in high school when I had mono for six weeks might have been a clue. But I was in love with the guy. He was a singer in a rock band and I was young and naïve.”
“When did you figure out it wasn’t gonna work?”
“Honestly? Pretty soon. I saw how flimsy his plan was the first month we got to L.A. Us just scraping by created problems of its own. The only thing that made it tenable was me loving California and hanging out with these cool roommates we had. But actually leaving him? That took a year.” Delilah rolled her sleeve and motioned to the badass design on her arm. “He’s the reason why I got this tattoo.”
“It could’ve been worse,” Shea pointed out. “You could’ve married the guy. And instead of leaving after one year, you could’ve waited twelve.”