Had she been leaving? She definitely hadn't been having any sex. They hadn't for... well, she couldn't remember. That probably told the story there, didn't it? But the bacon frittata, the shirts? She'd been ironing plenty. Missy's senior year hadn't felt any different than any other year of their marriage.

She felt her breath catch, her eyes fill with tears. He was wrong. She hadn't been leaving him. She'd never fully been with him. It had been Max. It had always been Max, and for that love, she had nothing to show. She was alone in every way that mattered, and she'd left Steve that way too. "I'm so sorry."

He shifted, accidentally kicking a plastic bin of onions. "You have been drinking."

"I wanted you to be the lid to my pot, but Steve, you're not. You were lots of things, good things, like stable, and I know you love Missy. But for me--"

He straightened, his elbow touching a rash of raw bacon he was better off not knowing about. "I'm not coming back to you, Gwen."

He was quitting before he got fired, and she owed him that. "Right." She smiled, hugged him quickly before either of them could think about it. "And you'll be just fine, won't you?"

He handed her the mug. "Of course."

People could marry and live out two decades then get divorced, all the way divorced, with fairness and if not affection, then a kind of healthy understanding. It made a person feel good about humanity. "About the money..."

He held up his hands, tried to ease by her toward the cooler door. "It's not me. It's Frame Incorporated, Gwen. You saw the green files, remember, after the blue ones?"

She reached for the block of cheddar as Missy came in, and it only took the girl a second to assess the situation, based on how quickly Gwen had the cheese taken from her.

Missy held onto it. "I draw the line at being an orphan."

Deb followed Missy in, and Gwen could hear her from the doorway, "What's going on in here? For Christ sake you're in a cook-off. I have money on this, and Nicola is not going to--"

"Disqualifie." Nicola pushed her way in and joined the single file column of bodies. They all crunched back further and the only thing blocking Gwen from the end wall was Steve, horrified by having his body up against a stack of tater tot bags.

Deb refused to turn around even though Gwen could see Nicola popping over her shoulder like an angry ferret. But Deb could fight even with her back to the enemy. "You'd like that wouldn't you, Nicola? But I think you're the dishonest one here."

Gwen didn't want to rat the French rat out, but she was literally up against the wall. "I know why her family kicked her to Belmar." She tried to spread her hands out, but they wouldn't clear a shelf on one side. "It's pretty big too."

Nicola's eyelids lowered, a Gallic bluff, "You know nothing."

Deb tried to crank her neck to see behind her but only an owl's could rotate that much. "You've been using us to make a cookbook, haven't you?"

"Oh," Gwen snorted, "it's more than that."

Nicola's eyes opened wide. "How did you--"

Deb sucked in a breath. "Stolen recipes?"

Gwen watched surprise register on Nicola's face, quickly followed by anger. "My grand-mere left much to my brothers. She would not sest oppose my borrowing of her recipes."

It was worse than Gwen thought, and she'd thought some pretty bad things about the woman. "Your family turfed you because you took recipes from your..." Gwen could only whisper, "dead grandmother?"

She heard Steve suck in a breath. "Shame on you."

She turned to him, eyebrows drawn. It was okay for him to take her equity in the house, but a few stolen lamb recipes and his ethics kicked in?

He backed further into the tater tots. "You're not my grandmother. A grandma!"

Ellen hollered from the doorway, "What about grandmas?" She squeezed in behind Nicola, who looked unaccustomed to touching the masses, and Gwen could see the boys peeking in from the doorway.

Missy tipped her head toward Nicola. "She stole from her grand-mere."

"Oh for crying in a bucket." Ellen gave Nicola's back the disapproving mother look, and Nicola slowly turned toward her.

Ellen pointed to her chest. "And what have you got on that lovely silk blouse?" She whipped out a white handkerchief, distracted apparently from the true crime, and began to dab at the inside of the placket.

Nicola looked horrified that Ellen's hand was down her shirt, which served her right. Then Gwen noticed there seemed to be quite a lot of whatever it was. She motioned for her mom to pass over the handkerchief.

It cleared Missy and then Deb handed it to her, and the distinct sweet of cocoa rose up from the fabric. "Is that?" Gwen sniffed again to make sure. "Nicola has chocolate lava cake inside her shirt." She looked past Deb to meet Nicola's wide eyes. "Inside your shirt."

Deb's voice wobbled on a laugh. "Shame on you."

Gwen smiled back at Deb. "Oh for crying in a bucket, Deb, isn't Ty a student in Nicola's program? Why, that's a real problem, isn't it?"

Nicola lifted her chin. "I am leaving already--"

Deb nodded to Gwen. "And there's the cookbook we tested and refined the recipes for..."

All that lamb for nothing but recipe thievery. "I bet Ma and Pa Gaspard would be very, very disappointed if they found out, but if Grandma's name went on it and half the profits--"

Deb shook the number off.

"If seventy-five percent of the profits from the cookbook went back into the program. It would be a..."

"Goodwill." Deb grinned.

"Yes, a goodwill donation. And you," she pointed at Nicola, "don't get to vote today. And, to be fair, Deb, you shouldn't either. Deal?"

Deb nodded.

Nicola shrugged as if it had all been her idea. "Oui."

Gwen sighed. "Well, my work here is done. My work out there nearly done. File out, people."

The boys stepped aside and Ellen and Nicola walked out, followed by Missy and Deb and Steve behind her. They spread out when they cleared the cooler, but she caught Nicola looking back. "Don't worry. I won't tell him. I wouldn't want to cause you any trouble." She smiled. "You and Max are the perfect couple."

Gwen stared at the sauce pan. A dozen tiny fish heads bobbed in her once perfectly balanced sauce and made her eyes tear. There'd been a pinch of anchovy paste when she'd gone in the cooler and a school of anchovies when she'd gotten out.

"Whew!" Steve shook his head. "This kind of cooking is not for me. I'm gonna go." He patted her shoulder, kissed Missy on the cheek, and left.

"Mom..." Missy stood beside her, waiting.

But it was over. She looked over at Ty's side. The last hour and he was already celebrating with champagne, the saboteur, and yeah, that was aptly French. She turned to rummage around for a meat thermometer and checked the temperature of her fishy sauce. One hundred and twenty degrees. Not bad. She picked up the pan and made her way over to Ty.

He turned with a smile that now seemed a bit too practiced. "Gwen," he sniffed the air, "la poisson." He shook his head as if in sympathy but looked ready to laugh. "Which one of the guys made the sauce?" He studied the boys across the kitchen as if genuinely trying to see who'd been stupid enough to put that many fish in a sauce Provencal.

Stupid enough? Maybe, who was vindictive enough? was the real question. She turned and caught the smirk on Mranda's face that softened into a doe-eyed innocent look that Gwen was the wrong gender to fall for.

Closing the gap between them, she saw Mranda narrow her eyes in challenge, and the expression was so familiar, it finally clicked. "You're a second generation R.A., aren't you?"

All those years ago, Gwen had tried her best to be nice to that nasty Mandy. Hell, she'd even taken her on that road trip to the Curtis, even though Max had tried to talk her out of it, and she'd had to wait another couple of weeks to lose her virginity, dammit. Well, she was done being nice to people who got in her way.

"I believe I knew your mother." Gwen kept eye contact, calculated the best way to make revenge count, and poured half the pan of sauce on Mranda's purple suede pumps.

The girl jumped back but so, so late. The shoes simply could not be saved, and before Mranda regained the gift of speech, Gwen pointed to the sardine head caught in the right one. "Ah, look, the little guy's swimming right in your toe cleavage."

Mranda made a choking sound and scrambled to get out of her shoes.

It was Ty's turn next, but he held up his hands in innocence. "I didn't tell her to do that."

"Oh, I know." She moved closer, put her left hand on his chest just as she had that day in his room. "You only give women a little chocolate lava cake encouragement." She slid her hand down the length of his tight torso, "and they're moved..." She slipped it under his white chef's coat, "to help you." She pulled his waistband out.

He shifted, looked around. "Gwen..." And she dumped the rest of the sauce down his pants.

He jumped, air sucking in, Aussie swearing out.

"Don't worry. It's only a hundred and twenty degrees. It would take five minutes of exposure to result in third degree burns, remember? It was on the test I helped you pass."

He whipped his pants down to his ankles and doused his boxers with a glass of champagne.

"Cheers, Ty."

Turning back to her side, she could see that the boys, her daughter, and even her mother knew it was over. She'd lost and once she left Belmar, she knew she'd never come back. She'd been wrong, dead wrong about the fork in the road. It was time to admit that she'd screwed things up a long time ago, and nothing would change that. Nothing could.

But she would, one more time, feed the people she loved.

The chicken pot pies came out of the oven golden brown and bubbly. The rustic crust, draped over the vegetables and herbs, said comfort in the best possible way. But even though they'd delivered them to the banquet room, potpies didn't say five star chef.

Waiting for the inevitable verdict, they sat around a cafeteria table and enjoyed the meal. By the time Gwen finished the last bite, Deb joined them, sat heavily, and sighed.

But Missy smiled. "This is like a set-up, right? You act all disappointed, but this is so good. Mom really won, didn't she?"

Jason rapped his knuckles on the table. "Way to go, Venus!"

Deb shook her head at Jason. "Uh, no. Ty made sesame garlic lettuce wraps with smoked chicken tied up with tiny strips of red pepper. In bows. I don't even know how he did that. You'd have to have really clever hands, and yeah, he won." She shrugged. "He's going to Paris. Early actually. Nicola got him a job before his degree even." Deb subtly pointed to the placket of her own blouse.

Gwen nodded. "His lava cake must be really good."

"We had it, remember, Gwennie?" Ellen looked at her like she was surprised anyone would forget. "We all had it at Max's. My mouth waters just thinking about it."

Before she had to answer, Hayden got up and began to take plates. "We're gonna clean up, Venus." Jason and Bryan jumped up to help him.

"Nope. Thanks, guys, but you've done enough. I need to finish this." She saw them look at each other, reluctant to leave her losing and alone. They were the nicest boys, and one more ounce of pity from them and she might cry. "Go on. I'm fine, really. I could use a little quiet."

She hugged each of them and felt a little like Dorothy saying goodbye to the tin man, scarecrow, and Hayden, who didn't deserve it but by default would be cast as the cowardly lion. "You have a great heart."

Hayden smiled as if he knew, and she wished she could stay and see them through their time at Belmar. She watched them walk away and understood they'd be okay just as clearly as she understood that she wouldn't be.

Ellen rose, her ankle clearly giving her some pain. "I'm gonna go, Gwennie."

Missy moved beside her. "I'll drive Grandma back home. We'll see you there tonight?"

"Yeah, I'm hoping I can move back home with my mother."

"Of course, Gwennie. We'll have a code. I'll put a scarf on the doorknob when I have a gentleman caller." Ellen leaned in and kissed her forehead, and Gwen closed her eyes and breathed in the sweet bite that was her mother. Missy kissed her in the same spot, and they smiled at each other.

In the silence after they'd left, Deb cleared her throat. "I'm sorry that I thought--"

But Gwen held up her hand. Deb hadn't been wrong about much. "The old college boyfriend? It's Max. And before I knew he was married to Nicola, we had, you know, lava cake, so I did know the power couple. But I didn't know about the cookbook, really."

"I'm even more sorry that you're leaving, Gwen. Stop by the kitchen if you're back on campus again." Deb tried to smile. "You can give me the lava cake details."

But Gwen knew she wouldn't be back. "I'm gonna be pretty busy living with my mother."

"Well..." Deb got up, put a friendly hand on her back. "You're always welcome."

"Thanks, Deb."

She sat on the nearest counter top, a definite no from the first week of school, not that it mattered anymore. Her section of the kitchen lay in ruins, the floor littered with raw shreds of pie crust and carrot coins. She didn't need to see Ty's side to know they'd tidied up like the next activity would be a surgery.

Beside her were leftover mounds of chopped cilantro and parsley and more odds and ends than she could use in a season of home cooking. Home cooking. She looked around and knew she would miss the cafeteria, the friendly round tables with energetic college students, the rattle of flatware being replaced by a work-study employee, the smell of vats of coffee and simmering taco meat and the sizzle of the burger grill. She hadn't missed it the first time she'd gone. Things had been too... well they'd just been too. But this time, she would know what she'd lost.

She swung her legs back and forth, took deep breaths, and tried to find the motivation to get off the table and get to work before the cafeteria staff slipped in the pool of chicken broth that had been ladled out too vigorously by Bryan.

Hearing footsteps, she turned to see Max standing with the winning kitchen perfection behind him.

He lifted his chin, "Hey," and looked so much like the boy she'd fallen in love with she felt pain squeeze her chest. "I..." he tipped his head in the direction of the banquet room, "tried the plates."

"Oh. That makes my day even better." She jumped down from the table.

"I heard what happened."

"What part?" She walked over to the cooler's wall and reached for a broom hanging from a metal bracket.

"Did you think you could win?"

She stopped. "Excuse me?"

"Did you believe it would work out, any of it?"

She pulled the broom down and began to sweep, the back and forth motion stirring the fresh scent of parsley. If it hadn't been for the anchovies... She considered her cooking against Ty's and wanted to say yes more than she ever had. She wanted to believe yes about herself, about her whole life. She met Max's eyes. "No."

He didn't say anything but took the broom from her and kept sweeping.

She focused on the leftover food and put the herbs and remaining sauce in empty cafeteria bowls. She hoped old man Jameson would bend enough to use them.

They worked in silence, finishing a few minutes after the first staff arrived for the dinner shift. She started to tell one of the cooks about the leftovers, and then knew they'd never use them. This was by-the-book cafeteria fare, institutional cooking. Who ponied up the extra touch of spice or flair of creativity? It wouldn't get done unless she did it herself.