Page 1 of The Main Event

1

ONE

“What’s this?”

When the plate slid in front of me, I had trouble wrapping my head around what I was seeing. Someone had taken some sort of squash I didn’t recognize and cut it like a ribbon. It was arranged delicately on the plate, beef medallions offsetting it, and the entire entree looked as if it had been sent from Heaven to make my day.

I, Daisy Reynolds, was something of a foodie, and I found joy in new discoveries. This discovery at Cauldron Bubble Bistro, the restaurant that had been started by Lux Lexington and her fiancé Jesse Crane, was one for the record books.

Lux, who had graduated ahead of me at Salem High School, beamed as she absorbed my reaction to the food. She wasn’t much of a cook—something she readily admitted—but her future husband was a dynamo in the kitchen (and in the bedroom if Lux’s cocktail ramblings were to be believed) and together they’d embraced her love of Salem’s witch lore and his kitchen prowess and opened the hottest new restaurant in Salem. They’d also gotten engaged, which meant they were ridiculously cute and happy.

I wasn’t jealous or anything, though. Not even a little.

“Do you like it?” Lux asked. She looked hopeful.

“I haven’t tasted it yet,” I reminded her. “It looks amazing, though.”

“Itdoeslook amazing,” my father agreed as he slid around my chair and dropped a kiss on top of my head. His entree was waiting for him because he’d come from Boston, during rush hour, and had obviously been held up. “Well done, Lux.” He beamed at her.

Lux returned his smile. My father had always boasted a charming streak a mile wide. When I was in high school, all my friends had crushes on him because he often came to my school events in a suit—he was a corporate lawyer—and the other girls tee-hee-heed themselves to oblivion when he smiled at them. “Thanks, Mr. Reynolds,” she said as her cheeks turned pink.

“Joe,” he corrected. “You’re an adult now, Lux. You can call me Joe.”

Lux looked caught. Her blond hair was swept back in an ornate bun with little Halloween pins sticking out of it, making her look put together and deliberate, but I happened to know a little more than two years before, she’d been eating hot dogs with pornographic intent inside of a food truck so she could pay her rent.

In other words, she wasn’t a true adult quite yet.

“Um…”

Taking pity on her, I drew her attention to me. “So, how is business? I mean … it looks good. How is it, though?”

“It’s been really good so far,” Lux replied. “It’s been so good, in fact, I don’t want to jinx it. Jesse says we’re already in the black, which is unheard of for a new venture. It doesn’t hurt that we’ve subcontracted out the food trucks under our banner, and that’s basically free advertising if they pay for themselves, which they do.”

“I had a fried green tomato sandwich at one of those food trucks just this afternoon,” my mother offered as she dug into her chicken dish with gusto across the table.

Next to her, my other mother did the same with a vegetarian entree. She was determined to eat healthier these days, which I found interesting because she was the one who could eat an entire bag of salt and vinegar potato chips in one sitting. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I always laughed when she made the attempt. “I had the asparagus salad, and it changed my entire outlook on vegetables,” she enthused.

Having two mothers had been an adjustment when it first came about. My biological mother Nikki Stone—she never took my father’s last name when they were married—decided to try yoga. There she met Rosie Simpson, and life changed for everybody involved. My mother realized she wasn’t entirely straight. My father, although hurt, decided to let her go because he figured a happy mother would be better for me, and all of us embarked on a new kind of family together.

It was easier for my father to work out of Boston, so my mother—er, mothers—had primary custody. He was only thirty minutes away, though, which meant he could make it to Salem quickly should the need arise. He made it to every school event. He was in the front row for every play. When it came time for prom, he had hors d’oeuvres with my mothers while I got ready. Then they all took a million photos as a group before I headed out. He and Rosie had even developed their own friendship separate from my mother—they golfed in a league together once a week in the summer and had taken up curling at a local arena in the winter—and everybody was disgustingly pleasant.

I’d once asked my father if he was bitter about what had happened. I was older by then, and I’d only thought to ask when another student had mentioned it. My father, being my father, sat me down and explained that he loved my mother, and eventhough it broke his heart that she couldn’t love him the same way back, he wanted her to be happy above all else. That meant embracing Rosie. On top of that, he told me, he wanted my childhood to be as drama free as possible. They’d all put me first, which was likely one of the reasons I was well-adjusted.

Or, well, I thought I was well-adjusted. There was a possibility I wasn’t all that well-adjusted, but if I was seeing things that weren’t there, I didn’t want it pointed out now.

“How was the drive?” Mom asked Dad as he dug into his food.

“A bit heavy,” he replied. “Salem is starting to pick up its fall traffic even though it’s still early September. People will start coming in to partake in the festivities even midweek now. I’m going to need to adjust my plans.”

“We can always have dinner a little later on family night,” Mom assured him.

If it was weird that I was twenty-seven and still having family nights with all of my parents, I didn’t acknowledge it. I was just so used to it that I couldn’t imagine it any other way.

“What about you, Daisy?” Rosie asked. I called her “Mom” sometimes and “Rosie” other times. There was no rhyme or reason, and she’d never pressured me to refer to her a specific way. “How are things for you?”

“They’re a little nerve-racking,” I acknowledged. Lux had pulled over a chair to join us—she was clearly more interested in our conversation than working—and it made me grin. “The new boss is coming in Monday.”

Dad frowned. “I forgot about that. The Hunter Hotel has been in the same hands for as long as I can remember. It’s going to be weird thinking about somebody else running it.”