Клео Коул - French Pressed

“Is that why you’re getting a paunch?”

I covered my mouth to stifle the snort.

“I do not have a paunch,” Matt replied, sounding appropriately irritated. “What are you, size four?

“Six.”

“In my opinion, you should eat more. You don’t want to end up like the skinny models in Breanne’s magazine. They wolf down the catered lunch, then throw it back up right before the shoot.”

“Gross,” Joy said. “I could never do the bulimia thing, which is too bad, because I love to eat. And my butt’s too big.”

“Your butt is not too big,” Matt rightly affirmed. “In fact, you look skinny to me, and nobody trusts a skinny chef. You should pack on a few pounds, just enough to show you like to eat. Look at your mother —”

“Ahem!” I exclaimed, deciding it was a good time to cut Matt off.

Walking into the kitchen, I found Joy standing by the stove in sweatpants and a T-shirt, and my ex-husband lounging at the table, his hand around a mug, a floor-length silk Japanese kimono swathing his muscular body (Breanne again. No doubt).

Matt brightened when he saw me. “Clare? How did you sleep?”

“Sleep?” I muttered. “What’s that?”

“Come here, Mom,” Joy said, looking serious.

“What?” I said. “What did I do now?”

My daughter’s arms opened wide. “You only totally came to my rescue twice !” she exclaimed, and before I knew it, Joy was hugging me like she used to when she was a little girl. “Thank you, Mom,” she said, swaying back and forth with me in her arms. “You were so great, coming to Vinny’s last night and standing up to that detective! I don’t know what I’d do without you! I love you!”

My eyes met Matt’s. He was smiling so big I thought his face was about to split.

“Am I dreaming?” I whispered to him.

He shook his head. “Your daughter loves you. You don’t believe her?”

“Joy,” I said, “your dad helped last night, too. I never would have made it up to Vinny’s apartment without your father’s innate ability to act like a big, dumb jerk.”

Matt rolled his eyes.

Joy laughed. She released me and stepped back. “Daddy told me what he did. I thanked him already.”

“I see.”

“So, sit down!” Joy insisted. “I’m about to cook you both the best eggs you’ve ever tasted.”

I took a seat across the table from Matt. Joy poured me a fresh cup of Morning Sunshine. Then she returned to the stove, where she added a second frying pan and a tiny sauté pan to the clutter on top of the range.

“I was telling Dad about Tommy asking me to cook him an egg for my audition,” Joy explained. “Of course, I realized that a four-star chef would expect a four-star egg, so I prepared it in the style of Fernand Point—he’s the man who invented French nouvelle cuisine.”

I glanced at my ex. “Are you paying attention? This is what you paid for, you know.”

“Yeah.” Matt smiled, rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. “I think it was worth it.”

Joy took two small china dishes and immersed them in a hot water bath. Then she lit the gas under the pair of frying pans and dropped a pat of butter in each. “We start with butter in a gently warming pan—”

“Butter?” Matt said. “I thought nouvelle cuisine was supposed to be light, not full of butterfat.”

Joy shrugged. “Monsieur Point had a saying about butter. ‘Du beurre! Donnez-moi du beurre! Toujours de beurre!’ ”

“Butter, give me butter, always butter?” Matt translated.

“Exactly,” Joy said. “A lot of fine cooking can be done without butter, but nothing from the great syllabus of French classics—and nouvelle cuisine is no different. Okay, Dad, let’s move on, shall we?”

Matt’s eyebrow rose at his daughter’s pedantic tone. I laughed into my coffee cup.

Joy checked both pans. “Now that the butter is just warm enough to spread, but not hot enough to foam, crackle, or spit, I take two eggs—” She displayed the tiny white orbs to us in a fair imitation of a magician presenting his beautiful, delicate doves. “I crack each one into its own saucer. Then I slide the egg carefully into its own buttery pan.”

I watched as she deftly slipped the eggs into the melting butter, first one, and then the other. She adjusted the flame until it was barely more than a blue glow under each pan.

“At this low temperature I slowly cook the egg until the white barely turns creamy, and the yolk heats up but doesn’t solidify.”

With a knife, Joy plopped another lump of butter into the sauté pan, turned on the gas. “In a separate pan I melt more butter.”

Matt glanced at me and whispered, “When will these eggs be done? Next Friday?”

“I heard that, Dad!” Joy snatched the china from the hot bath, dried each plate. Then she glanced into the pan. “Perfect,” she announced. “Now I slip the egg onto a slightly heated serving plate and pour the fresh, warm butter over it. Then a touch of ground sea salt and fresh cracked pepper.”

Joy turned to face us, a plate in each hand. “Voilà! The perfect egg.”

She set the plates down in front of us, handed me a fork. I touched the yolk with the utensil, and then tasted it. It was sweet, like butter, and silky, too. I’d never tasted an egg quite like it. I took a bit of the white. It was creamy and delicate.

“Wonderful,” I cooed.

“Absolutely amazing!” Matt declared. “Delicate and buttery and perfectly seasoned.”

“So I guess Chef Keitel must have been impressed,” I said.

“Well, I got the job,” she replied with a shrug.

“How about Vinny?” I asked. “Was he given the same challenge?”

Joy’s face fell. She nodded silently. “Vinny was so talented. Tommy told me his eggs were amazing, even better than mine.”

“I can’t imagine that,” Matt said, licking his fork.

“Vinny didn’t even let his egg get near a pan . He separated the white from the yolk, cooked them both in buttered saucers set over boiling water, then reunited them at the moment of cooked perfection. He used sea salt for seasoning—and white pepper so no dark spots would spoil the look of the finished dish.” Joy looked away. “Vinny was such a great cook…and he was a really good friend to me…I can’t believe how I found him last night, lying there that way…in all that blood…” She wiped at a tear with the neckline of her T-shirt. “I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I took a fortifying sip of coffee and then carefully said, “Joy, I’d like to ask you a little more about all that. About what happened last night.”

She shook her head. Turning, she started cleaning up the pans. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s over now and—”

“ No , Joy,” I told her firmly. “Honey, listen to me. This isn’t over. Whoever killed Vinny is still out there. You have to talk about it, help us understand, so we can help find whoever hurt him.”

“Why? Why can’t you just let the police handle it? Why can’t you—”

“Butt out,” I interrupted. “That’s not an option. Not anymore. Not with Lieutenant Salinas on the case. I have no doubt he still suspects you of something, Joy—if not hurting Vinny, then maybe knowing something about who did or helping to cover it up.”

“But that’s crazy! Don’t you think so, Dad?” Face flushed, Joy stopped trying to clean up. She looked to her father. To my surprise, Matt was shaking his head in agreement—with me !

“Your mother’s right, Joy. You have to tell us whatever you know. Everything , you understand? Even if you think it’s something we won’t like hearing. We’re your parents, and we love you. If you can’t trust us, who can you trust?”