Happy Hour by Michele Scott Page B

anyone. It’s missing something. I can’t tell
what. I feel it though. It’ll come to me. I promise you’ll be the first to see
it when I’m ready.”
    “You artists,” Danielle quipped.
    “I know. We can be a bit strange about our work. They’re like children, I
suppose. You want to protect them, right?”
    “Isn’t that the truth.” Danielle walked through the gallery, stopping in
front of Alyssa’s oils of the little boy in the vineyard. “This child, he looks
so real. You had to have had a photo or a model to do this.”
    “No. The pictures are in my head.”
    “And you’ve never seen this baby or boy before?”
    “No.”
    “You are truly a talent, my friend.” Danielle tucked her dark red hair
behind her ears. “Shall we go eat?”
    “Sounds good.”
    Danielle headed for the door, her back to Alyssa who reached out and
touched the cheek on the boy in the painting, almost as if saying good
night—good night to a ghost.
    ***
    Kat spotted her friends come in and she seated them at the best table in
the house. Christian’s had a different flair than Sphinx did. It had class like
their place in the city, but far cleaner lines. Black and white and Tiffany
blue were the primary colors. A fireplace sparked in the middle of the
restaurant that gave off a warm glow during winter evenings. For the summer
months, Kat placed candles inside the hearth. On the walls were black and white
photos of Christian in various cooking motifs, some with him and Kat and some
with his daughter Amber. There was one with her boys in it that also included
Amber, Christian, and herself.
    “Hi, ladies. What can I get you to drink?” Kat asked after her friends
sat down in one of the booths.
    “What would you recommend?” Alyssa asked.
    “For you, I have a great chardonnay from a local winery, actually owned
by a Latino family. Kind of a neat story. Dad started out working in the fields
years ago and made his way up the ranks. Now he owns his own winery.”
    “El Sueño, right?” Danielle asked. “Great family and, yes, the wines are
fantastic. Why don’t we have a bottle of that?”
    “Perfect. And I’ll also bring you out a plate of a delectable herbed goat
cheese and mushroom tart. It’s delicious.”
    “And low-cal, too,” Alyssa said.
    “Of course!” Kat hurried off to the back for the wine and to put the
order in for the tart. She’d planned to serve the girls herself if she couldn’t
join them. It was after eight on a Wednesday and things were slowing down. The
scent of garlic and rosemary filled the bustling kitchen as four cooks worked
alongside Christian.
    “Mushroom tart,” she said to her husband, who was overseeing his sous
chef, Renaldo. He patted him on the back. “I’ll get it.”
    Kat pulled out a chilled bottle of the chardonnay from the wine cooler
and started to head back out into the restaurant.
    Christian put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her. “Can I talk to
you?” he asked.
    She grimaced. That was a tone she hated. “Now?” She held up the bottle of
wine.
    He nodded. “It’ll only take a minute and its been weighing on me all
day.”
    She sighed heavily. “What is it?”
    “It’s Jeremy,” he said.
    She knew it. Hours, and occasionally days, would go by without Christian
coming to her with some complaint about one or both of her boys, and like
tonight, he always picked the most inopportune moments to accost her. It was
almost like he waited to attack when her defenses had no choice but to be down.
For goodness sakes, she was trying to pour wine for patrons and now her friends
were waiting on her. It had been three days and she’d held her breath, hoping
that they could make it through a week without some squabble about her sons to
bubble over. “What now?”
    “He had on my socks again.”
    She eyed the wine, intentionally avoiding her husband’s gaze. “He had on
your socks again?”
    “Yep. I know they were mine too because I put my initials on them, and
when I