“I do care about all of you guys.”

“You do? How are we supposed to tell? You quit working for Wyatt, you dump your job there on me, you disappear on Jim-”

“I didn’t-”

“You did, Tam. Yes, you did. And we all felt bad for you, and still do.” He reached a hand over the table and touched hers. “But you’ve got to come back now. You’ve got to start, anyway. Remember back before Jim even took us on, we swore we’d always call each other on it if we started down a wrong road? Remember that?”

“Yeah, okay. Of course.”

“Well, this is your brother calling you. You need to get out of this now, start going another way. Jim’s going to need you these next weeks at least. I’m going to need you for him. Maybe even Wyatt will wind up needing you.”

“Wyatt won’t ever need me. He never did. And now he’s mad at me.”

“He’s never said one word about being mad at you. If anything, he’s worried. But not even slightly mad. He blames himself, is what I think. For hiring Craig in the first place, for keeping him on, for you guys getting together.”

Tamara looked up at the ceiling and seemed to be gathering herself. She inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a long sigh.

The waitress appeared and placed a small dish in front of each of them, then a plate of six pot stickers down between them. “Kung pao shrimp coming right up next,” she said.

Mickey picked a pot sticker up with his chopsticks and put it on the dish in front of his sister. “If you eat, you’ll feel better,” he said. “Promise.”

4

Saturdays, Mickey went to his cooking class at La Cuisine, located in a large Victorian house on Webster Street between Clay and Sacramento. He was already halfway through his six-week Professional Series course-“Knives and Butchering,” his eighth formal class in the past three years. At his present rate, he could expect to get his Certified Culinarian ticket, the lowest professional ranking, and possibly get hired to cut onions or sift flour for eight hours a day, in only another two or three years.