Page 100 of Taste the Love


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Stating the answer was as easy as stating the boiling temperature for water, as easy as separating an egg into its white and yellow elements, as easy as breathing clean forest air.

“No.”

That night, after an exhausting day of serving tursnicken and trying to convince people fried beets were not unapproachable, Kia retired to Old Girl. Deja had been planning on sleeping on the foldout couch, but Kia got Deja a hotel room. Kia needed to be alone.

Now she set her phone on the table of Old Girl and called up the international routing number that would connect her with her father’s emergency radio. She put in her personal code. A moment later, her father’s voice answered.

“My little angelfish!” he exclaimed. “Is everything all right?”

“I ruined everything.” Kia burst into tears the way she hadn’t since she was a kid. Even then, she had had some of her aunt’s reserve in her. She’d been seven or eight the last time she’d cried to her father.

“Angel, what’s wrong?” Her father’s voice dropped an octavein concern. “Talk to me.”

“No one died.” Kia tried to swallow her sobs. “Or got cancer or abducted or killed anyone.”

“Okay. We’ve established no death or illness. What happened?”

“So much has happened.” Why hadn’t she called him on his emergency radio the day she won the American Fare Award? Why hadn’t she filled him in on every development? The emergency radio cost by the minute, but not hundreds of dollars. Now she had too much to explain. “I won the American Fare Award, and then Gretchen said I should buy this land, which I wanted, and there were all these nice, liberal middle-aged white people with water bottles—”

“Slow down. What kind of water bottles?”

“Water bottles with liberal stickers on them. Wait.” A bubble of laughter broke the surface of her tears. “That’s what you care about? The water bottles?”

“I live at sea, Angelfish. Water is very important. But go on. I talked to Eleanor yesterday, and she told me a little bit about this land deal. Start from the beginning and tell me everything.”

“How do I know where the beginning is?”

“There’s always a golden glow around the beginning because no matter what happens later, everything begins with love. You just have to go far back enough to find it.”

“Love,” Kia sobbed.

“That’s right, my dear. And love does make us cry sometimes, but it’s still worth it.”

“I’minlove.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“It’s not wonderful.”

“Love is always wonderful, even when it hurts.”

“But I hurther.”

“Start at the beginning.”

“It was the first day I walked into school and saw Alice Sullivan.”

“The one you kissed,” her father said. “We always wondered what you hadn’t told us about her.”

Kia poured out the story, from her first crush on Sullivan to the careless way they lost touch to the American Fare Award, the Bois, her canceled accounts, Mega Eats’ offer.

“Dad, Sullivan could lose everything, and it’s all my fault.”

“You took a risk on the land and on love, and it is as serendipitous as your cousin finding true love. You know we didn’t expect Lillian to fall in love like she did. Your aunt and uncle and I always thought it’d be you who ran off with a burlesque performer. But Lillian and Izzy found each other, and now you’ve found Sullivan.”

“But Lillian and Izzy worked out. Lillian didn’t bankrupt Izzy.”

“You and Sullivan will work everything out. Love always works out if you believe.”