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for their restaurants. She was busy picking out what she needed until nearly six, and then drove to the produce market and spent an hour and a half there. She got back to Little West Twelfth Street shortly before eight and made herself a steaming bowl of café au lait. It was just what she needed after a cold morning buying fish. She turned on the radio in the restaurant kitchen and was startled when she heard an announcer on one of the early morning talk shows talking about her mother’s age. She knew that was going to upset her even more, if she heard about it too. At least no one was saying that her daughter April Wyatt was thirty years old today. It was enough having to deal with it, without having the whole world know, April thought. She didn’t envy her mother that side of her life. But her mother liked everything else that went with it, the glory, the success, the money, the acclaim, and if she wanted that, she had to take the downside too. April had no desire to be famous, she didn’t aspire to be another Alain Ducasse or Joel Robuchon. She just wanted to run a restaurant where everybody loved to eat, and so far she had done well.
    April had her father’s natural discretion and simplicity, andher mother’s passion for hard work. No one worked harder than her mother, April knew. Her father had a much gentler, less ambitious view of life. The academic life suited him well. And both her parents readily admitted that their union had been a mismatch from the first. Their marriage had lasted only eight years, and they divorced when April was seven. Her mother had already been building her career by then, and her father said he didn’t have what it took to stick it out. He was in way over his head in her world. They were good friends now, and the divorce had never been bitter. They were just totally wrong for each other, and Valerie had always said to April that her father was a good man. He had married her stepmother within two years of the divorce. Maddie was a speech therapist who worked with children in the public schools, a far cry from Valerie, with her TV show, major career, endless licensing agreements, successful books, and glamorous public image. She hadn’t been as big a star when he married her, although she was heading that way, but Valerie had become one over the years. Maddie and April’s father had had two more children, two girls, Annie and Heather, who were respectively now nineteen and seventeen, and both good kids. Heather helped April in the restaurant sometimes in the summer and wanted to teach. Annie was a math genius, and a sophomore at MIT. They were all nice, decent, normal people, and both her parents enjoyed coming to the restaurant to eat. Her father often brought Maddie and Heather to dinner on Sunday nights, or for brunch, and Annie when she was homefrom school. He was very proud of April, and Valerie was too. And April loved the fact that there was no animosity between them and everybody got along. It made life easier for her. She couldn’t imagine living in a family with parents who hated each other after a divorce, although she had seen it happen to friends as she grew up. The only bad thing that had ever happened to her was the torturous relationship she’d had with the chef in France, which was probably why it had come as such a shock and hit her so hard. Until then, no one in her life had ever been abusive to her, or even unkind. She always said she never wanted to go out with another chef and was quick to say that most of the ones she knew were nuts.
    As she drank her café au lait in the immaculate, quiet restaurant kitchen, she made some notes for additions to the menu that day. They would introduce the white truffle pasta at dinner, and they had two fish specials that day, and she added a Grand Marnier soufflé just for fun. The people who worked in the kitchen would start drifting in at nine, to start doing the prep work. The waiters came in at eleven, and the restaurant