Irish Stewed by Kylie Logan

bedspread on the double bed.
    “You can hang your clothes in here.” Sophie opened the door of a closet that smelled like mothballs. “Unless you don’t even want to bother. I mean, if you’ll be leaving in the morning, anyway. I need to be at the hospital at six and it’s in Youngstown. We’re going to have to leave early, I’m afraid.”
    “Not a problem.” I plunked my suitcase on the bed. “I’m used to getting up early. Meghan always wanted her vegetable juice before she did her morning run.”
    “Meghan Cohan!” Sophie’s eyes sparkled. “She’s so beautiful and so talented.”
    And so unkind.
    I shook the thought away. It might have been easier to keep it there if Sophie didn’t ask, “What’s she really like?”
    “Like you said.” How’s that for vague? “Meghan is a beautiful woman. And she’s plenty talented. She stars inmovies. She directs them. She’s got her line of clothing and yoga products, her perfume, her jewelry line.”
    “And she promised you a cooking show of your own.”
    I’d been looking out the window, but when I heard the sudden metal in her voice, I spun Sophie’s way.
    She clutched her hands at her waist. “I read all about it. In the tabloids. You were supposed to have your own cooking show. Then that Meghan”—Sophie narrowed her eyes—“she pulled the rug out from under you. Just like that. The articles, they didn’t say why.”
    “It’s complicated.” Truth be told, it wasn’t. See, Meghan’s sixteen-year-old son had a nasty drug habit. And the media got hold of the story.
    Though it wasn’t true, Meghan blamed me for the leak, and once that happened . . .
    Well, let’s just say that if there’s no fury like a woman scorned, there’s no holy hell like a megastar can create when she feels she’s been done wrong.
    That cooking show, the planned cookbook, and my job went up in a puff of smoke as big and as ugly as the ash plume rising over a wildfire. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Meghan made sure I got blackballed and stayed blackballed with her powerful friends who could afford personal chefs and in every restaurant worthy of my talents.
    Which explained Hubbard, Ohio.
    And Sophie’s Terminal at the Tracks.
    And didn’t change my mind one little bit about leaving in the morning.
    The thought firmly in mind, I took my cosmetic case over to the dresser. There was a photo there in a frame studded with gaudy “jewels” in shades of purple, red, and turquoise.
    My stomach clenched. My jaw tightened. I recognized the frame and the picture in it, and I didn’t dare touch it.
    Sophie had no such qualms. She grabbed the picture and turned it toward the light so I could get a better look.
    “You and Nina.” Sophie leaned over my shoulder and pointed at the woman whose crazy, curly hair was barely contained by the red bandanna she wore along with the apron from Cal’s Diner. She was standing in front of the grill and I swear, even all these years later, I could smell the aroma of the onions she grilled to perfection and the burgers she piled them on. Before I met Nina, food was nothing more to me than a way to keep my body fueled. Nina had changed all that. She taught me to appreciate good food. She taught me to discipline myself enough to take my time and savor every minute I spent in front of the stove.
    “You must have been about fifteen then,” Sophie said, shaking me out of my thoughts.
    “Fourteen,” I corrected her, because I knew for sure that the photo was taken just a week or two after I’d gone to live with Nina, the first time I visited her at work. I’d just come from a placement where my foster parents were more interested in collecting money from the California Department of Social Services than they were in me. I could see the smudges of gray under my eyes, the results of the sleepless nights I spent listening to Bob and Marie argue. My hair was chopped and uneven, an act of defiance I thought would show them that I was my own