Page 21 of Summer Reading

Em smiled when she saw me approaching, but there was a concerned look in her eye, as if she wasn’t sure how I was doing today. I’d left on a rather awkward note last night, racing after my brother, so I understood the worry.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey back,” she returned. In a dry tone, she continued, “Nice to see that Tyler didn’t actually expire from teenage indignation.”

“It would have been tough to explain to the parents,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “Much easier to blame it on quicksand or spontaneous human combustion.”

I laughed. Good old Em, she always knew how to make me feel better.

“Ryan told me what happened at robotics yesterday. Is Tyler okay?”

“Yes, or mostly,” I said. Very dramatically, I wiped my brow with the back of my hand. “Thank goodness. I didn’t want to have to call Dad and Stephanie and say I’d failed on day one and Tyler got beat up and was already booted out of camp. Can you imagine?”

“You’d have to flee the island,” she joked.

“Possibly the country,” I agreed.

“Which would be totally unfair since taking on a teenager is no small task,” she said. “Stephanie mentioned to the bunco ladies, she and my mom play together, that you were watching Tyler for half of the summer. Even Stephanie said she hoped Tyler didn’t wear you out.”

And just like that my self-doubt reared its ugly head, and for a second I wondered if there had been a notice in theVineyard Gazette, asking everyone to keep an eye on Tyler since I was in charge and had no idea what I was doing. Paranoid much? Um... yes.

Desperate to change the subject, I asked, “What are you working on?”

There was a stack of books at her elbow. I glanced at the titles, and even with my reading issues, I noted one word common to each book spine. Cancer. Iglanced back up at her, and she quickly moved the stack of books to the cart behind her.

“Research for a patron,” she said.

I noticed the rainbow of sticky notes poking out of each book.

“You’re an awesome librarian,” I said. “Marking pages and everything. I wish I’d had someone to do that for me when I was in school.”

She was wearing a cute sleeveless sage green dress with a lightweight white cardigan over it. Her wavy red hair was tied at the nape of her neck, and she looked very much the professional librarian. Her glasses were perched on the end of her nose as she peered at me over the computer monitor in front of her. She fiddled with the button on her cardigan. “It’s the job.”

She didn’t sound thrilled, but at least she had a career. I glanced down. I was wearing a faded Dead & Company T-shirt, baggy shorts, and checkered Vans. Of the two of us, I was clearly the one who was unemployed and going nowhere. I tried to shake off the critical voice in my head, but its grip was fierce.

“You said a few weeks ago that you were going for the executive chef position at the Comstock,” she said. “Did you get it?”

If it was anyone else, I’d have hedged and not done a full disclosure, but Em was my best friend. She was one of the few people I’d told about the job. I knew Icould trust her not to make me feel worse about the outcome, which, frankly, would be hard to do.

“What happened was that I was passed over for the promotion and I quit,” I said.

“Passed over?” she cried. “What? Why? That’s utter bull—” She caught herself, clearly remembering where she was. She lowered her voice and said, “You’ve given the Comstockyearsof your life. How could they not give you the job?”

And that was why Em had been one of my very best friends since we were babies. She was definitely the sort that when you called her in the middle of the night and asked her to come over, she came, no questions asked, whether the task was burying a body or night harvesting Chardonnay grapes.

“The owner said he didn’t think I was ready,” I said. “Also, he admitted he preferred to have a man run the kitchen.”

“Oh, that’s so sexist,” she fumed. “You should sue him.”

“That costs money,” I said. “He blathered something about the amazing reputation of the chef he hired, but I’ve had more press than that guy, and I’ve been a chef longer, too.”

“ ‘Guy’ is definitely the operative word,” she said.

I nodded. I didn’t add that I hoped that was the case. It was much easier for me to accept being overlooked because I had boobs than because I had dyslexia of whichthe owner was aware, because when I first started at the Comstock, there had been a steeper learning curve for me than other chefs. The fact that I was still there when most of the others had moved on had lulled me into thinking the owner was confident in me and my abilities, but apparently not. Yup, it still stung.

“It makes no sense. You were written up in theBoston Globeas an up-and-coming chef to watch,” Em ranted. “You’re a rising star in the culinary world. I hope the Comstock gets a million one-star reviews.”

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