Delilah wearing braces, her thick hair pulled back in a tight ponytail that highlights the roundness of her face. Her gold eyes glaring at me from opposite her mother’s kitchen table.

Home.

Safety.

A tremor goes through my gut. I open my eyes, wanting to step away from the counter. From her. But she’s watching me with rapt eyes. Waiting for an answer.

“I remember those days,” I say thickly. “Your mama yelling at us to wash our hands or we wouldn’t get a snack. I remember how we all ate those grilled cheese sandwiches quickly so each bite would be just as crisp and oozing, and she’d warn us that we’d burn our mouths with our gluttonous eating habits.”

Her gaze holds mine, her voice soft now. “And we didn’t care because it was too good to eat slowly.”

“Yeah.” The air is thick with memories—and us. I have the insane urge to step into her space, touch her cheek. Just touch her.

Delilah blinks, and the spell is broken.

“This is almost exactly like your mama’s,” I say to fill the silence. “But better.”

She makes a dubious face. “No one makes them better than Mama.”

“You do.”

Flushing again, Delilah pours us iced tea, and we eat in relative silence.

“So you’re a chef because you want to evoke memories?” I ask after a time.

“Not exactly.” She wipes her hands with a napkin. “So we agree that food evokes memories, but a chef is doing something a little different. She’s telling you a story through food. If she does her job correctly, she’s taking you on a journey, making you taste things in a new way, making you stop, think, and appreciate the food. A chef not only feeds you; she gives you pleasure. She illuminates.”

Heat sweeps under my collar, and I struggle to get it under control, but damn she makes it sound almost illicit.

Unaware of my struggle, Delilah continues, “Good food is theater in a way, but the audience participates.”

“We’re both entertainers,” I say with a start of surprise.

“I guess we are,” she agrees after a second.

“So why catering? Why close it down?” I can’t help myself. I want to know her as she is today, not as she was before.

Her words come out with measured slowness. “When I was in New York, working the line, all those monstrous hours, I used to dream of catering, where I could slow things down, have a bit of a life outside of cooking.”