The Secret French Recipes of Sophie Valroux - Samantha Verant Page 0,9

was probably fake, but it served its purpose. Now it was useless—like me. I chugged more Dom Pérignon too quickly, choking on the bubbles.

“Sophie, what’s wrong?” asked Walter. “You should be happy, thrilled even. You’re my best friend. You don’t need to play along with this charade anymore. Isn’t it great? We can live the lives we want to live. No more hiding—”

“In the closet,” said Robert.

I held up a finger. “I get it, and I’m happy for you two. I am. But I’m having a really bad day—a momentous, life-crushing day.”

“What’s going on?” asked Walter, deep concern flashing in his eyes. “Sit down, Sophie. Stop pacing. Tell me what happened.”

“Oh, it’s really bad. Worse than bad. Epic,” I said. Gripping the bottle of champagne, I slumped on the couch and stared at the ceiling, the devastation of what had happened rolling in like ten-foot waves and pulling me under. My voice shook as I recounted what went down at Cendrillon.

Walter sat quietly in thought. He tapped his fingers on his thigh. “Maybe you should take a vacation. When was the last time you took one?”

“That would be never,” I said.

“Go somewhere. You’re always working so hard. Everybody needs a break,” said Walter. “What about Monica? Your chef friend in Los Angeles. Give her a call. Maybe a change of scenery is what you need. Until things cool down.”

He’d said exactly what I feared; he didn’t want me to stick around. “Now that I’m fired as your fake fiancée, are you booting me out, too?” I asked.

“No, never, not in a million years. You can stay with us for as long as you want. Forever even. We owe the world to you—”

“We do,” said Robert. “Tonight, we’re having cocktails at the Boom Boom Room and a celebratory dinner at Le Coucou.” He paused, giving me the once-over. “Go get yourself cleaned up and come along.”

“Thanks,” I said, feeling more cuckoo than “hey you” or “peekaboo,” the French translation of coucou, and pronounced the same way. “But I’m not in the shape, form, or mood to go anywhere. I’m going to make myself something to eat, watch a movie, and go to bed. Go have fun. I’ll be fine.”

But I wasn’t fine. I just wanted to forget everything.

4

flat champagne bubbles and broken dreams

After the door shut behind Walter and Robert, I polished off the bottle of champagne and shuffled over to the freezer to retrieve a half pack of old cigarettes. I’d given up the social habit two years ago, considering I was never social, but I figured my life was already in the crapper. One or two, maybe three, cigarettes wouldn’t hurt me.

The cigarettes were the long English brand—Sobranie Cocktails—with colorful pastel encasings and a gold band around the filter, the same kind my mother, Céleste, had smoked. I lit one up, thinking of her. Sometimes she’d used a long black holder, a vision conjuring up glamorous movie stars from the golden age of film. Her lips would purse and she’d inhale, finally blowing out the smoke from her raspberry-red lips in a whoosh, her posture always straight. When she smoked, she was graceful, even elegant, whereas I was not. With each inhale, I coughed and hacked. I snuffed out the butt in an ashtray.

I kept the only photo I had of her tucked away in my top drawer underneath my socks. I fumbled my way to my room, pulled it out, and made my way back to the couch. A few people had said I look like her. Similar in appearance to me, she had large green almond-shaped eyes, high cheekbones, a defined jawline, full lips, and long black hair, but people had also said that I was rougher around the edges. Perhaps it’s because I rarely wore makeup, my hair was usually in a messy braid, and, for the most part, I was always dressed in chef’s threads. Not exactly the epitome of glamour. I stared at the picture, gripping the corner between my thumb and forefinger.

We were holding hands and skipping down a path in Central Park. In the background, there were a couple of ducks in a pond. She was twenty-four at the time, wearing a black flowered sundress that tied at the neck; I was around five, wearing a pinafore dress, a white shirt, and black Mary Janes with lacy white socks. She looked down at me with a grin; I looked up at her with awe. Even in this picture, Céleste carried herself with