The Lost Recipe for Happiness - By Barbara O'Neal Page 0,95
husks, slightly reddish masa, and pork filling; one for dark brown husks with duck and cherry; and one for red husks with goat cheese and tomatoes. Elena headed the pork line—her speed and deftness in spreading the masa were better than anyone’s.
“Chef,” said Alan, appearing at the doorway to the upstairs dining room, “there’s somebody here to see you.” He gave her a look she couldn’t quite interpret.
Elena nodded. “I’ll be right there.”
Wiping her hands, she gestured for Tansy to take her place, and went out into the sunny, now very appealing bar area. A girl leaned on the bar, long hair falling in silken tumbles down her back.
“Hey, Portia,” Elena said, surprised. “What’s up?”
“Hi! Um…” She shifted, foot to foot, her hands in tiny back pockets. “Can we…uh…maybe go outside or something?”
“Sure.” She pointed toward the broad wooden porch, the smoking area for the restaurant, which overlooked part of the street and a dense stand of dark-limbed pines. Eyeing the woolen scarf Portia wore over her sweater, she said, “Is it cold?”
“A little.”
“Let me get a coat.” She retrieved it from a hook by the door, and they headed outside, leaning on the banisters of the porch. The air was brisk, warmer where the high-altitude sun crisped the surface, sharper in the shadows, where it carried the promise of snow.
“Might snow tonight,” Portia said, looking at the horizon, where dark gray peaks, only just dusted with snow, poked ragged fingers into the sky. A few clouds gathered.
“It’s time, isn’t it? The slopes open in a month.”
Portia nodded, blue eyes narrowing in expertise. “I’m pretty sure those are snow clouds.”
Everyone had begun to eye the sky, peering hopefully at every cloud that crossed the sharp peaks and rolled over the valley. Snow, they said to each other. Snow, they hoped to hear on the newscasts. Snow, snow, snow. It sounded like an incantation, a word exhaled on gray and crystal breath. Elena had taken to doing it herself.
“What’s up, Portia?”
“Two things, actually. My dad said I can keep my eyes open for a dog—”
“Hooray!”
She grinned. “Yeah. I’m happy. And two—” She took a breath. “We never—um—talked about the party and all that.”
Elena met her eyes. “You mean you getting drunk?”
Portia colored faintly. Nodded.
“Well, I haven’t said anything to anyone. But I’ve been thinking about this a little.” Mainly when she heard the sound of car tires going too fast around the corner by her apartment—kids laughing, reckless, unaware of all that could happen in the single blink of an eye. “If you knew you could get in trouble, why did you drink that night, much less get drunk?”
“I get stressed out around my mom. Like, she’s so hard to be with. I love her and she’s kinda going through a bad time right now, but that’s what we did sometimes, when I was home. Drink a little bit. It was just our secret.”
Working as she had in kitchens for so long, Elena had heard a lot of stories about bad parenting. The industry attracted the abandoned and misfits. Her own mother had abandoned her, she supposed, but it never ceased to shock her how idiotic parents could be.
She didn’t want to go off on Portia, however. “You probably don’t need me to tell you that your mom needs to get a clue, right?”
It startled her. “Yeah. I mean, no. I think she just does it because she was so young when she had me and it’s kind of a high-pressure life and, you know, lots of people are jealous of her? But she doesn’t really have it all that good.”
Elena lifted an eyebrow.
Portia shook her head. “I know. I do.” She met Elena’s eyes. “I shouldn’t make excuses for her. My counselors said that, too. But sometimes I feel like I was born the grownup and she’s the kid.”
“Look,” Elena said. “Your mom is none of my business. But I need to know that you’ll be okay. I don’t want you drinking like that anymore. If you never have one, you never have too many, right?”
She blinked. “Oh! I never thought of it like that before, but yeah. Okay.”
“I’ll also keep your secret, and I won’t tell your dad under two conditions.”
She looked so hopeful it almost broke Elena’s heart. “Okay.”
“Number one: you don’t drink anything. Not anything. When you’re in college and you want to revisit the whole thing, that’s fine, but between now and then, not one drop.”