For a moment she didn’t say anything. Then, finally, she sighed. “Nothing. I love him so much it hurts. But I know who I am and what I am, and it wasn’t going to work. Not in the long term.”

Who and what she was? All sorts of possibilities flashed through my head. She was already married. She had a congenital and inheritable disease. Or she was secretly an undercover federal agent. Or maybe she was in witness protection because she’d seen a mob assassination. “Um . . .”

Sighing again, she said, “Ash will never leave Chilson. Or at least this part of Michigan. And I’ve never stayed in one place for more than five years since I was eighteen. I just get itchy to move on. I like it here, I like it a lot, but I’m already wishing away November through April, waiting for warm weather and sunshine. What kind of marriage would we have if I was unhappy for six months out of twelve?”

Her voice cracked at the end and she rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. “And now I’m crying again. Minnie, I’m sorry, but I need to go, okay? Sorry.”

I was almost crying myself as I watched her hurry through the store and outside. Poor Chelsea. Poor Ash.

But . . . at least now I knew what was wrong.

And I was going to find some way to fix it.

*   *   *

I banged on the back door of the Three Seasons kitchen and barged in without waiting for anyone to answer. The restaurant was officially open, but it was April and the number of cars in the parking lot was a teensy fraction of what it would be in a few weeks. In June, I wouldn’t have dreamed of walking in just before the dinner rush as I would have been lambasted by Kristen’s wrath or run over by a speeding waiter. Or both.

“It’s just me,” I called out.

“Hey, Minnie.” Harvey, Kristen’s longtime sous-chef, nodded at me. This was slightly worrying, because to do so he’d taken his attention away from the knife he was using to fast-chop a stack of green onions, but he didn’t seem concerned, so I tried not to be. “If you’re looking for Her Highness, she’s in her office.”

“Any chance that she’s sitting down and putting her feet up?” I asked.

Misty Overbaugh, Kristen’s head chef, who was almost as tall as I was, gave me a look over the top of a huge pot. “That’s a joke, right?”

That hadn’t been my intent, but it probably should have been, because even before I reached Kristen’s office, I could hear thumping and fluttering noises that didn’t sound anything like someone sitting in a chair, resting.