Chapter 1

"Odile, give Ilse the head of the table. She's only just back."

My husband said it with the room half full and the fish already going out, and the chamber secretary standing right there with the seating cards in her hand.

Twenty-three years I cooked that dinner. I have never once sat down at it.

"Fine," I said.

He smiled like he had won something small and reasonable. The secretary looked at her cards. Nobody in that room thought fine meant fine.

I turned back to the stove before Casper could touch my shoulder. The copper pan hung above it, dark at the rim and pale where my thumb had rubbed the handle smooth. I took down the fish plates instead. Behind me, chairs scraped while the secretary moved Ilse's card to the place facing the room.

That chair had been mine for tonight. The chamber had insisted after I cooked their anniversary dinner for the twenty-third year. I had polished the old pan before dawn, trimmed thirty-six portions of cod, and remembered which guests hated fennel. Casper had watched me do it all without mentioning Ilse.

The doors opened again. His first wife stepped inside wearing a dark blue dress, one hand still holding her coat closed. She stopped when she saw her name at the head of my anniversary table. For one second, she looked toward me through the serving hatch.

"I can sit somewhere else," Ilse said.

Casper pulled out the chair for her. "Don't make this awkward. It's one dinner."

My fingers tightened around the warm edge of a plate. Heat pressed into the pads of them until I set it down. A server waited beside me for the next course, eyes fixed on the kitchen tiles. In the dining room, the secretary straightened the card as if the problem were crooked paper.

Ilse removed her coat but did not sit. "Odile?"

"The fish is cooling."

That was enough for Casper. He gave the server a little wave, the one he had used for years when guests asked to meet the cook and he wanted the room moving again. The first plates left my hands. Each went to the table where I knew it belonged: no sauce for Marsh, extra lemon for Boyd, the crisp end piece for Voss.

Casper came into the kitchen after the second course went out. He leaned against my prep counter, close enough to lower his voice. "She needs the room more than you need the chair. You'll understand tomorrow."

I wiped the pan with salt and a folded cloth. My wrist moved in the same tight circles I had used since the first dinner, never letting water touch the seasoned bottom. Casper waited for an answer. I put the cloth aside and lifted the pan back onto its hook.

"We're serving dessert," he said.

"You are."

His smile slipped. Beyond him, thirty-six guests began tapping spoons against empty coffee cups. I untied my apron, folded it once, and placed it beside the untouched anniversary plate Casper had ordered for me.

Then I reached above the stove and took the copper pan down again. I carried it through the kitchen, past Casper, and out the rear door. When I glanced back through the glass, the chamber secretary had lowered her head to study the seating cards in her hand.