She had taken a day off, trusting Nick to open and close the restaurant, leaving the instructions on his answering machine. Yes, she was running away, and no, she wasn’t proud. She had never trusted someone else to watch over the restaurant for a full day before. But as she’d told Lindsay, she hadn’t taken sick leave from the restaurant the entire time they’d been open. If ever a woman needed a mental health day, she had earned one. She sat on Lindsay’s couch, with a stoneware mug of green ginger tea, looking at the folder she’d pulled out from the recesses of her files. Lindsay sat down next to her, looking at the clippings Mari had laid out. She made a small, sympathetic noise. “I thought you’d put this all behind you.” Mari looked over the newspaper articles and reviews. Le Pome—Don’t Waste Your Time; Derek Black’s West Coast Disaster; Crashing and Burning at San Francisco’s Le Pome. “I thought I’d put it all behind me, too,” Mari said. “Apparently there’s still a little bit left.”
