He Left Me at the Altar for My Sister. Six Years Later, He Booked a Table at My Restaurant.
Part 1
The reservation came in under his mother’s maiden name, which is how I knew he was afraid of me.
Thibodeau, party of two, 7:30, window if possible.
I’d been running Marguerite’s for four years by then. Small place, thirty-two seats, one Michelin nod that almost killed me and definitely killed my second cook. I knew every name on the book that Thursday because I always do. It’s the one part of the front of house I never handed off.
I stood in the pass with the printout in my hand and I read the name three times before I set it down and walked into the walk-in and closed the door behind me.
Forty degrees. My breath in front of me. A whole shelf of duck confit I’d cured myself.
Thibodeau was the name of Ryan’s grandmother. He used to laugh about it. Said it sounded like a soap opera villain. Said if he ever needed a fake name for a hotel, that’d be the one.
I stood in the walk-in until my hands went numb, and then I came out and told my sous I’d be taking the seven-thirty in the window personally.
He didn’t ask why. He’d worked for me long enough.
The last time I’d seen Ryan Devereaux, he was standing at the end of an aisle in a church in Metairie with my sister’s hand in his and forty-seven of our guests staring at him like he’d just set the pews on fire.
I was in the bride’s room. I found out because his brother, who I actually liked, knocked on the door and said, real quiet, “Marguerite. Honey. You need to hear this from me.”
That was June 2018. I was twenty-six. My sister Camille was twenty-three. They were married in a courthouse eleven days later. My mother went to the courthouse. My father did not.
I moved to Charleston that August with two suitcases and a knife roll. I answered a Craigslist ad for a line cook at a place that fired me in six weeks because I couldn’t stop crying during service. Then I got a job at a better place and I didn’t cry anymore because I didn’t have anything left to cry with.
Four years after that I opened Marguerite’s. My grandmother’s name. The one who taught me to make roux when I was seven and told me, standing over the stove, that a woman who can feed people will never be alone unless she chooses to be.
I chose to be, for a long time.
Seven twenty-eight, I stood at the host stand with my apron off and my hair down and I watched the door.
He came in alone.
No wife. No woman. No party of two.
He’d gotten older in a way I hadn’t. His hair was shorter and there was gray at his temples and he was wearing a jacket I recognized, which was the cruelest thing about him, that he’d kept a jacket I’d helped him pick out at a Nordstrom Rack in 2017.
He saw me and he stopped walking.
For a second I thought he was going to turn around and leave. I almost wanted him to. It would have been so much easier.
Instead he said, “Marguerite.”
Like he’d been practicing.
I said, “Table’s ready. Follow me.”
I walked him to the window. I pulled out his chair like I’d done for a thousand strangers. I set the menu in front of him and I said, “Your server tonight will be Emily. Can I start you with something to drink?”
He looked up at me and his eyes were wet and I hated him for that too.
He said, “Marguerite, please. Sit down. Just for a minute. I flew here to tell you something and I don’t know if I’ll be able to say it twice.”
I said, “I’m working.”
He said, “Camille is dead.”
I heard my own voice, very calm, from very far away, ask him what he wanted to drink.
He said, “She’s been dead for eight months. And there’s something you need to know about the wedding. About why I did it. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you until she was gone.”
Behind me, in the dining room, someone laughed at a joke I couldn’t hear.
I set the menu down.
I said, “Start talking.”