Chapter One
Sixteen Years Later
Effie Olsen knew it was just after sunup before she opened her eyes. She'd spent the first seventeen years of her life on Alder Isle, and even though she'd been gone for another sixteen, she could still tell time by how the island sun felt on her skin. If Effie had to guess, she'd put it at just before 5:00. The late May morning light was bright and insistent, overly cheery in the most obnoxious way.
Four fifty-nine a.m. was too early for optimism, but try telling Maine that. Or more specifically, try telling that to an island off the midcoast of Maine with a full-time population of fifteen hundred. An island that was once quiet and uncool, but was now ballooning with tourists for much of the year-tourists who'd booked their reservations months in advance for one of the country's best new restaurants. Effie had woken up on an island that was eight miles long and seven miles wide. An island that was hard to get to and damn near impossible to leave. An island that ignored the fact Maine was supposed to have foggy, gray mornings.
Effie rolled over and groaned. Her head was pounding, and her mouth felt dry. Eyes still shut to the world, she reached for her phone on the nightstand, except . . . Hmmm. The nightstand wasn't there. Her hand fell to the side of the bed and touched exposed mattress. There was no fitted sheet, and Effie recoiled at the realization. Ew. A jersey knit sheet was crumpled down by her feet.
Shitballs.
She understood she wasn't in her childhood room, but there was no good reason for that. Where was she? Her mind raced, although the dull heaviness in her skull made it hard to think. She pulled her knees in close to her chest, curled up like a rabbit in a warren, and tried to piece together the last twenty-four hours.
Her plane had landed at the Bangor airport after flights from San Francisco to New York to Maine.
Her father, Samuel, and younger sister, Ingrid, picked her up with a steaming travel mug of milky coffee and a bag of pizza-flavored Combos. Which was a sweet throwback to her favorite teenage breakfast, but come on, Dad. Heard of granola? Sophomore-year Effie would have happily eaten a whole bag of cheese-filled crackers before 9:00 a.m., but thirty-three-year-old Effie preferred to live by structured, sensible rules. (With, apparently, the exception of waking up in strange bedrooms after a day of cross-country travel.)
On the drive from the airport to the coastal town of Rockland, Effie and her father and sister danced politely around any real conversation until Ingrid blurted out the question Effie had been hoping to avoid. "After sixteen years away, why'd you come home now?" Effie pointed out how she'd come home for Ingrid's high school graduation and for a handful of Christmases. How both Ingrid and her father had visited her in New York, in Italy, and in San Francisco, where she'd been working as a professional chef. She didn't have the heart to tell them that she had returned this summer, for the whole summer, out of desperation only.
She didn't have words gentle enough to explain that Alder Isle always felt too small and a little stifling for her big career goals. And she didn't have the courage to tell them she'd just gotten fired from her dream job.
She had too much pride to admit that after years of globe-trotting with a knife bag and a few chef's coats, she was finally, undeniably, very regrettably broke. And that she was fresh out of backup plans. (Even now, in this strange bed, she wondered if she'd find the courage to be fully honest before September rolled around.)
When they reached Rockland, her dad drove his truck right by an enormous queue of cars. Although the ferry had been booked days ago and there was no more vehicle passage available, dear old dad sometimes played poker with the ticket scanner, so they were allowed to squeeze onto the midmorning boat. On the two-hour ride to Alder Isle, Effie successfully diverted every question about herself, instead coaxing Ingrid-a Generation Z financial prodigy who worked as a strategy consultant for one of the big crypto companies-to explain once again what an NFT was, and asking her father to share the updates from Meadowsweet Scoops, his ice cream shop in town. She bit her tongue to hold back questions about her childhood best friend. Effie knew he still lived in town, on the same street he'd grown up on. But she never asked about him specifically when her family shared island life updates. Probing about Ernie would have felt like ripping open an old wound. One that still smarted every time she touched it.
The ferry docked. They drove the half mile into town and then another half toward the library and school. Effie watched out the window as familiar scenery passed. She'd avoided this island for almost as long as she had lived on it, but it still looked, smelled, and sounded the same. Simple houses with graying shingles. Doors in varying shades of sea-foam green, teal, and marine blue. Porthole windows, unselfconsciously twee. Yellow lobster crates stacked five high in side yards. Piles of granite heaped next to front doors, passing as decor. Poppies and irises growing from cracks in the crumbling sidewalks. A pickup bumping down the road with two kids sitting on lawn chairs in the bed. Road dust. Bright sun. Screeching gulls. Dougie's lobster roll truck on the corner. The line outside it. A breeze. Salty air. Effie sighed. It wasn't home anymore, but it felt achingly familiar.
She hated that; hated that she still felt attached to a place she'd tried desperately to disown.
Alder Isle was a perfectly fine little island. If you didn't mind living a perfectly fine little life.
Her dad turned onto Haven Street and pulled the Tacoma into their drive. Effie stepped out and looked up at the house, scrunched her nose. It was exactly the same. Two stories tall, weathered cedar shakes. The real ones, not the newer style shingles. Four four-paneled windows on the front. A lawn with grass way too long to be considered presentable and half a dozen "projects" scattered around the property, including a riding mower missing the seat. Effie's red Schwinn was leaning up against the garage, but, her father assured her, it had not been there for the last dozen-plus years. He'd put air in the tires and greased the chains and set it out for her arrival. To welcome her home. And because she didn't have a car. It was a vintage cruiser, and it looked its age. But it was hers. Her set of wheels for the next three months. The bossiest part of Effie's brain shouted she ought to be embarrassed about needing her childhood bicycle. But another, more tender part felt a fondness for it.
Effie waved goodbye to her sister, who started off toward the rented house she shared with her boyfriend, a cook at Brown Butter, a wildly popular, Michelin-starred restaurant. Well, good for Ingrid.
Not that Effie was jealous about the house or the boyfriend or even the good relationship her sister had with their mother since her parents' divorce.
She wasn't.
She'd rather live alone, out of a suitcase, for the rest of her life than settle down here.
Inside the house, Effie walked up the stairs, her extra-large luggage feeling extra heavy as it thumped against the wood flooring. The suitcase contained the contents of her entire life. She moved often and tried not to become too attached to any one place. It was risky, working in restaurants. She'd never met a restaurant owner she could trust, so she'd become nimble and efficiently self-sufficient. The downside of that strategy was that packing up and moving to a new city or country every year or so was financially devastating. After sixteen years in the business, Effie was financially, mentally, and emotionally devastated.
She heaved the suitcase onto the bed, and a bit of her thick, white-blond hair fell into her eye. Annoyed, she rummaged in her pocket for a bobby pin and stuck it in angrily, plastering the lock back into its ponytail. She looked around, further annoyed at the rogue corner of her heart that warmed at the familiar sameness of her childhood room. Same sky-blue shag rug, same white iron bedpost, same crinkly paper lamp hanging from the ceiling. Same collection of cookbooks and Alder Isle yearbooks on the shelf.
Same stupid lobster painting on the wall.
God, Maine was so predictable.
It would never be half as exciting as all the places Effie had traveled. But that was the appeal of this summer, wasn't it? There was safety in the steadiness.
She abandoned her suitcase and padded back downstairs to make a BLT for herself and a TLT for her dad. She used thick, center-cut bacon for herself; tofu for him. Beefsteak tomatoes on toasted white bread. A big smear of Cains mayonnaise. After eating and washing the dishes and leaving them to dry, they walked into town together, to the Meadowsweet Scoops shop. Her father had made a handful of upgrades to the shop, and Effie marveled at how modern and sophisticated it looked. She nodded as he described the state-of-the-art freezer and the elaborate toppings station that was big enough for four flavors of sprinkles. Meadowsweet Scoops had been her parents' pet project. And after they divorced almost twenty years ago, it became his everything.
"I love it, Dad," Effie said, and kissed him on the cheek.
He stayed to open the shop for the evening, and she walked back home, averting her eyes as she passed Brown Butter. She would see it soon enough. Effie let herself in the back door of her house-her dad's house, she corrected herself-changed into a pair of sneakers, and ran a quick two miles around the lower island.
She showered, then blow-dried her hair and tied it back into a medium-height tight bun. She hesitated briefly before undoing the pins and letting it hang in a ponytail. She paused above her suitcase, deciding what to wear before settling on a pair of cutoff shorts and a simple button-down. Effie may have been getting ready for a job interview, but she was also back in Alder Isle. No need to make any extra effort. No one else on the island ever bothered to. The permission to do a little less was, Effie realized, a refreshing change of pace.
And also, she didn't want to try too hard. Although the very broke part of her very much needed this job, the very prideful part hoped she wouldn't get it. She forced herself to look at the summer ahead rationally. Over the last sixteen years, Effie had done many things more difficult than cooking in a beautiful seaside restaurant. Even if that restaurant was located in her absurdly small, insufferably chatty hometown. Even if she no longer had any friends here; just ghosts and shameful memories. But hey, at least she'd get to work with the best produce, meat, and seafood Maine had to offer. The thought of fresh lobster, steaming and fire-engine red, made her mouth water. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad after all.
Maybe.
Effie made her way back into town. Back to the fine dining, farm-to-table restaurant that had opened three years ago. It was a Monday, one of Brown Butter's days off, and the parking lot was almost empty.
She entered the dining room. Passed the bar. Walked into the kitchen. She shook the hand of Jarrod Levi, Brown Butter's head chef. She tried not to notice his unruly dark curls tied back into a messy bun. The full sleeve of tattoos on his left arm. His angular jaw and dark eyes.
She tried not to notice the handful of sexist comments he dropped during her interview.
"So," Jarrod said as he led them back out to the dining room and motioned for her to sit on a barstool. "Why do you want to work here?"
Half an hour later, Jarrod offered her the role of Brown Butter's sous chef. His second-in-command. During their interview, he had asked why she'd been fired from her last job, and she gave him an appropriately self-deprecating answer. Told him she hadn't been ready for the responsibility of a head chef role. That she'd gotten in over her head. That to do that job-his job-you needed a skill set she simply didn't have. Jarrod had liked that answer. He hadn't said why the previous sous chef at Brown Butter had left, but that didn't matter to Effie. All she needed was a job for the summer. Despite an angry inner voice that shouted at her to run away immediately, run back to California, or France, or Bali, or literally anywhere else in the world, Effie accepted his offer. Because, despite telling Jarrod she was in it for the long haul, Effie Olsen had no plans to stick around. All she had to do was survive until September and save enough money to leave Alder Isle.
Again. For good.
Fifteen minutes after the interview (currently-in-a-strange-bed Effie cursed quietly at the memory), they were drinking at Son of a Wharf, a shack by Pine Cove that would never pass health code but that had cheap, cold beer and greasy burgers. He was telling her about leaving his job at Eleven Madison Park in Manhattan for Brown Butter a few years ago. She was drinking a beer so fast, she felt woozy.
An hour after that, Effie and Jarrod were taking shots of Jameson and he was laughing loudly. She couldn't seem to stop touching his arm.
An hour after that, his hand was on her bare knee.
Fifteen minutes later, she was shrieking, "MORTON IS TOO GODDAMN SALTY!" and he was slamming his fist on the table, shouting back, "FUUUUCKING THANK YOU! DIAMOND KOSHER SALT OR NOTHING AT ALL!"
It was a little thing, a chef thing. A thing nobody else would have gotten. And it got Effie.
Effie had known from the start that she wanted nothing to do with Jarrod, but in her beer-and-whiskey haze she felt oddly comforted by him. By the fact he knew which kind of salt was the good stuff. By the fact that no one really understood line cooks . . . except other line cooks.
Five seconds later, he was kissing her. She was kissing him. It was hard and intense, and they both tasted like Pabst Blue Ribbon. She was twisting her fingers into his bun, yanking the elastic loose. She wanted her hands in his hair; wanted to get messy and feel wild. He was grabbing her rear, pulling her closer. He was throwing a wad of bills onto the table. She was searching her shoulder bag for an Altoid. He was reaching for her hand, she was squeezing his hand back, they were both stumbling through the dark, late-night streets to the restaurant.
Copyright © 2024 by Rochelle Bilow. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
