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sticky proteins that delicately hold the clumpy pieces of crabmeat together, she told him. Coat in toasted panko, cook patties until golden brown.
    â€œNo egg? No filler?” He smiled. “What, we’re too sophisticated for that now?”
    â€œThere’s nothing filler about your daughter.”
    Only the sous-chef raised his eyes at this. She didn’t care, and the rest of them were intimidated by her, they wouldn’t dare look. Mr. Asbury blinked several times until he settled on, “I agree.” But it was clear he was not agreeing with her. Enough: she would make him eat. Stavroula plated the crab cakes and squirted an accompanying swirl of wasabi-avocado sauce. She used her fingers to confirm what she already knew. Perfect. Maybe some lemon peel. She added a little salt for crunch and also because salt, in Greek folklore, got rid of unwanted guests. Such as her father.
    If it were her father she needed to convince, it would have translated into This door is locked and so is the window. But with Mr. Asbury, it was more like a fence she could hop over. There were footholds, if you trusted your weight to it. She imagined herself trying to explain to her father who July was, what she deserved. He would turn around and tell her what she deserved. He would say she was doing this to spite him, and in this instance he would be right. Let me explain you something , she would answer back. It was time for her to be who she was on the outside so she could be who she was supposed to be on the inside. It had only taken thirty-one years.
    Mr. Asbury broke into the glossy crab cake with his fork. His expression was softening, like meat defrosting. Cooking with someone, you got to learn how they think. What he thought was, the menu would sell. Still—“You want my approval on this?”
    â€œNot approval.” She made herself—made herself—look at him. Ice and everything. Email, everything. “Your blessing.”
    Mr. Asbury was first to break away. He tried, quietly, “What about flowers? Her mother always liked yellow tulips.”
    â€œI’m not good at flowers, John.”
    In her life he was the one person who had ever gotten her flowers, roses after she landed him a solid review in The Philadelphia Inquirer , and they lasted ten minutes in the vase. Moments later, she was boiling them down to rosewater. She did not try to reassure him that she had been grateful; he saw it in the rosewater pudding she made exclusively for him, after-hours.
    Mr. Asbury didn’t know how to handle this kind of demand about his own daughter. Or from a woman. He was trying to protect July, but also Stavroula. They had never spoken it aloud, but Stavroula knew that Mr. Asbury must suspect her feelings. She remembered the first time she caught him catching her, though he may have seen it even sooner than that. July had come in to post the new weekly schedule. She addressed the evening’s waitstaff in a long black skirt, which exposed her calf, the most Stavroula had ever seen of July, not counting her bare, long, thin arms. The rest of her calf, Stavroula could imagine: white as batter. That was when Stavroula felt Mr. Asbury’s eyes on her. She double-checked. Had they taken actual inventory? They had. Did he know? Yes. Stavroula went directly to the ice machine and plunged her hand in. It drained the pink from her face and soon enough her fingers took on the texture of rubbery poultry.
    Mr. Asbury had picked up the menu and was rubbing it between two fingers as if it were oregano.
    â€œStevie, nobody does this. Nobody wants it done to them.”
    â€œMaybe they do,” she said, drawing back. Then, because it was him, she admitted, “I don’t know how to give less.”
    July at breakfast, July at lunch. July half-price appetizers with a summer ale, when everyone feels relief that the hard hours of the day are done and looks forward to the final amber hours of the