Jessica Conant-Park - Cook the Books

Josh’s voice rang out over the sirens. I turned to see him jogging up the lawn toward me. “We got them! We got Ade and Patrick!”

“Are they okay?”

“I think so. Yeah.” Josh wrapped both arms around me and pulled me against him. “It’s all okay now.”

I clung to him tightly and buried my face in his chest. Nobody in the world could make me feel as safe and as right as Josh could. God, I had missed this feeling. “But, Josh. Look.” I pulled away and walked slowly toward Kyle. He’d landed on his back. Blood seeped from his nose and from the side of his head, and his legs were splayed at awkward angles. As I watched, he turned his head slightly; miraculously, he was alive, although maybe not for long. “Josh, get the EMTs.”

Josh nodded and took off. I knelt down next to Kyle and spread my coat across him. He was mouthing something, struggling to speak. I leaned my ear close to him.

Kyle looked up at the sky and blinked rapidly. “It wasn’t supposed to be them, you know. Right? It was supposed to be Owen. We could have been together. I could have made her happier than he could. I’d have taken care of her. You’d have taken Patrick. I know you would. You love him. You’d have been the perfect mother.”

“Just hold on, Kyle,” I said evenly.

“See, Dad?” he continued. “Now I have the wife, the beautiful wife, and cookbook, and nobody is going to ruin it this time.”

“You started the fire at Digger’s, didn’t you?” I asked softly, leadingly.

“Oh, I had to. Hank Boucher wouldn’t have liked what Digger had to say about me.” His lips curled into a small smile. “That wouldn’t have worked out at all. I think I need to rest now.”

And with that, Kyle’s head rocked to the side. I pulled the coat up over his face and walked away.

“WHERE’SPatrick? Who has my baby?”

“He’s right here,” I said gently. “I’ve got him. He’s fine.” I carried Patrick out from my bedroom and handed him to Adrianna.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I’m still freaked out.” Adrianna reached out and took Patrick from my arms. She tightened the blanket around her son and kissed the top of his head. “Thanks for letting us crash here, Chloe. Obviously we can’t live in that house any time soon.”

“I doubt you’ll ever be moving back in there, Ade.” I put my hand on her shoulder and leaned in to give her a hug.

“True. This is the opportunity that our landlords have been looking for. A good excuse to renovate the apartments back into a single-family house. I don’t know where we’ll go.”

“We’ll find you guys something. How are you feeling?” I asked. I couldn’t hide my concern. “I know the hospital wanted you two to stay only one night, but I can’t help worrying.”

Ade shrugged. “We’re fine. Physically, that is. I’m still in a bit of shock, though. I had no idea that Kyle was such a whack job.”

I nodded. Ade and Patrick were lucky to have needed only minor treatment for smoke inhalation. By the time Josh had returned from my condo with the key to Ade and Owen’s apartment, the fire had really picked up. Only then had the smoke alarm gone off. One of the firefighters told Owen that some smoke alarms are triggered by flames and not by smoke. Ade might have been in the deep, exhausted sleep of a new mother, or she might already have been suffering from smoke inhalation when the alarm finally had sounded. In either case, I was immensely relieved that nothing worse had happened.

“So, Kyle wanted me?” Ade squirmed uncomfortably and pulled Patrick closer. “And he started the fire believing that Owen was inside?”

“Yes. It seems that Kyle imagined that with Owen out of the way, you could be together. He took all of the things you’d been saying about Owen’s job and terrible pay and wanting a better place to live, and twisted them in his mind. He developed the idea that he was exactly what you were really looking for and that he’d get rid of Owen for you so you two could, I don’t know, run off into the sunset together.”

Ade shut her eyes and shivered. Patrick let out a small squawk, as if he were in tune with his mother’s emotions. “Sick man.” She gently stroked the baby’s back.

“He thought that you were out that night and that Owen was home because that’s what I’d told him when he called me earlier in the day. He broke the glass in the door by the fire escape and started the fire using charcoal and lighter fluid that he tossed inside and on the fire escape itself.”

“God, and then he watched the fire from the backyard?” She pulled Patrick in even tighter.

“I know. But I guess he wanted to watch. Some fire-setters do.”

“Do you think Kyle had been waiting for an opportunity to kill Owen?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t even think that his fixation on you had all that much to do with you. I think that it was all about his crazy father. He set the fire at Digger’s the night before Hank Boucher was going to meet Digger for the first time and hear what an utter failure his son had been in culinary school. The night of your fire-”

“Don’t call it my fire,” Ade said. “It’s Kyle’s fire.”

“Sorry, the night Kyle set your place on fire, he’d just been dealt another rejection from his father, and I think that it triggered another desperate and pathological reaction. Kyle was determined to create the ideal- looking family that he thought he should have-the beautiful wife and the cookbook accomplishment-and when Hank didn’t invite his own son to this prestigious dinner, it set him off. His fire-setting was more about his anger and his fear of his father than anything else.”

I immediately thought of Danny, my client, and realized how deep his rage must be at his own awful father. I would have to insist that Danny make some changes; I didn’t know whether it would be possible to get his father to come to a session. If not, my client would still have to disengage from his father and deal with the damage that had been done. I had only a month left with Danny until my six- week winter break, so I made a mental note to meet with my supervisor and come up with a solid plan for continued treatment with one of the senior therapists. And then there was Alison and her fantasies about leaving her boyfriend for an idealized man who was never going to love her.

As the parallels between my clients and Kyle became obvious, it dawned on me that I’d left my client notes on the coffee table when Kyle had been at my place. What’s more, when I’d moved my notes out of the way, he’d joked about my not wanting him to read my diary. He’d read about Alison, client A, who was desperately in love with an older man and wanted to leave her current partner for this new, suave, charming man. Kyle must have thought that my notes about A were about Adrianna and about her infatuation with him! God, this should teach me to keep my notes hidden!

The first thing that I’d done after coming home from the hospital was to pack up all of the cookbook materials and mail them to Hank Boucher. I wanted nothing to do with that man ever again. I’d turned off the ringer on the phone, and I’d refused to turn on the television or the computer or to look at a newspaper, since I knew that the headlines would be riddled with the story of famous chef Hank Boucher’s murderous son. Today, I wanted to focus solely on my friends.

“Look, Ade, you can all stay here for as long as you like. I can go crash at my parents’ house in Newton for a while. It’s not a problem.”

“Absolutely not. We’re not about to kick you out of your own home, Chloe,” she protested.

“You’re not kicking me out. I’m volunteering. In fact, I’m insisting. I’ll be perfectly fine at my parents’ place.”