Firefly Nights Read online

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Copyright © 2020 by Katie Winters

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Katie’s Newsletter

  Connect with Katie Winters

  Chapter One

  Life as a pastry chef was all about patience. Christine had always heard this from her various pastry chef mentors, usually in some ridiculous French accent—and especially back in the ‘90s, when Christine had been an up-and-coming star in the New York City pastry scene.

  She had been a woman from the crumpled ruins of a far-away island; but soon, she’d found herself on her way to Paris, to London, to Rome, and finally here, to Chez Frank, the Upper West Side restaurant she’d worked at for the previous several years. She was forty-one years old and on the brink of yet another collapse. She should have been used to them by now.

  Christine gripped the top of the oven and squatted to peer through the little window. The tiny pink macarons, a truly difficult French delicacy, crested beneath the burning light: forming that crispy, eggshell-like top. She’d made countless macarons throughout her pastry chef career—but they always came with a catch. It always seemed that if she blinked too long or thought about something else for even a moment, the eggshell crunch gave way to hard-as-plastic tops—a consistency that couldn’t possibly grace the plates of some of the high-rolling guests of Chez Frank.

  Frank appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. He wore a remarkable suit, one they had picked out together on a recent trip to Paris, and his cheeks were blotchy, his blue eyes bright. Christine turned her head so that her dark, chestnut hair draped across her back. From down on the floor, she locked eyes with Frank, her beloved, the man who’d ruined their restaurant and the future she had so craved with him.

  “They’re almost ready,” she told him, a bit breathlessly.

  “Everyone’s a bit too drunk to know they’re late,” Frank said.

  “I’m a bit too drunk to bake them,” she admitted. “They’ll need to cool for a while. Perhaps it was all a mistake.”

  “Nothing Christine Sheridan has ever baked in her life has been a mistake,” Frank said. He placed his scotch glass on the counter and took another step toward her.

  She rose so that her slim frame curled against his body. All the fights had already been wrought—her demands about why he’d wasted their money, why he’d run the restaurant into the ground. They’d had such a remarkable thing going. They had been written up in every New York newspaper; every Manhattan socialite had whispered the name: Chez Frank.

  Now, it was all lost—and the staff, Frank, and Christine were there for a final night to celebrate before her very dream transitioned into a stupid sushi restaurant—one of the ones where you pick the sushi off the moving counters. It chilled Christine to the bone to think about it.

  Frank was drunker than Christine had realized. This was sort of the game in the restaurant industry, part of the reason she had fallen into it so heavily—everyone drank and drank and drank since the party never had any real reason to end. Their lives were parties—and they lived to serve others that kind of life. He pressed his scorched lips against hers, and her stomach twisted with revulsion.

  When the kiss broke, he peered at her with squinted eyes. “What’s up, Christine?”

  Christine shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Ever since you got back from the island, you’ve been a little...”

  “What?” Christine asked as she tilted her head.

  “I don’t know. You’ve seemed like you’re somewhere else at all times,” he said.

  Christine didn’t answer. Outside, the ex-waiters and ex-chefs of Chez Frank had begun to call Frank’s name. Neither Christine nor Frank had given the explicit details of just how much Frank had messed up and driven them into the ground. Therefore, Frank remained their champion, a guy who would surely land on his feet in the long-run and hire them all back.

  Back in the main restaurant, the bright-eyed waiters and cooks lifted their glasses to Frank. One of the general managers, a woman with large breasts and an affinity for very low-cut tops named Darla, stood on a chair and cleared her throat. Christine glanced toward Frank, noting that he ogled the girl. She’d always suspected something had happened between them, although, in the midst of the chaos of owning and operating a restaurant on the Upper West Side, Christine hadn’t had time to pin him for it or even blame him. They were all just fast-moving bodies in the most frantic city on earth.

  “Frank,” Darla said, her voice smooth, “I want to thank you for what you’ve created here for all of us. It’s been a home and a refuge and a...”

  “Is she going to list all the different words for home?” Christine muttered.

  Frank cast her a dark look, then returned his eyes to Darla.

  “We will all miss working here at Chez Frank. We’ll miss the remarkable pastries from your beautiful love, Christine, and we’ll miss the late-night screaming matches when we’re all so messed up and stressed out. Nonetheless, we were a family through all of this. And now, this chapter of our lives is over.” Darla placed her thin hand across her chest and sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever loved another restaurant more. Rest in peace, Chez Frank!”

  “Hear, hear!” a pimply waiter cried.

  The party continued. Christine poured herself very healthy glasses of wine, the kind of glasses that would have made her older sister Susan arch her brow in judgment. She watched from the drink table as Darla leaned her head a bit closer to Frank. She drew her blonde hair behind her ear as she spoke, her perfect lips bouncing. What did she have to speak so urgently to her ex-boss about?

  Then again, if Frank had cheated on her with Darla, why should she be surprised? The great and powerful Susan Sheridan herself had even been cheated on. Her marriage had ended, and she had retreated back to the Vineyard. It was pathetic, wasn’t it? Christine had always resolved never to go back there. She had gone out and crafted a whole other world for herself. She and Frank still had their oversized apartment near Central Park. She owned a cat. She had her favorite bodega and her favorite wine shop and her favorite cheese shop, all within walking distance. No, she would never be able to have children, but what did that matter, when she had the entire city at her feet?

  Her phone buzzed. She lifted it to catch a text from Lola. Now that the Sheridan sisters had reignited their relationship in the past month, texts were nearly daily—a strange thing to get used to. Christine kind of felt like she had two imaginary friends back in New York with her.

  LOLA: How’s the party?

 
CHRISTINE: Frank is wasted. And he’s flirting with the general manager pretty hard.

  But instead of sending that last part, she deleted it. She didn’t want her sisters to know just how pathetic she could be. She would make up a lie later.

  That’s what the Sheridan sisters were built off of, anyway. Lies. There was no reason they couldn’t return to it.

  Christine returned to the oven and removed the macarons. She had arrived just in time—a moment longer, and they would have crusted over. Out in the restaurant, people started to bang on the tables excitedly, and the music changed to something a little more upbeat. Christine walked to the little window that looked out across the restaurant. Darla had sidled up against a waiter and now swayed her hips against his. Frank remained close by, watching. Maybe he watched her; maybe he watched everyone. It wasn’t clear.

  When Christine had left Martha’s Vineyard the last week of June, she’d pictured herself returning to Manhattan with a renewed sense of how she wanted her life to go. After all, while on the Vineyard, she and her sisters had learned the truth of their mother’s death. Stan Ellis—that strange fisherman who kept to himself—had had an affair with her that had lasted years. When their father hadn’t wanted to divorce their mother, their mother had gone off on a boat with Stan. He hadn’t kept the lights on while they did who-knows-what on board. Suddenly, a tourist boat had crashed into them—and three people had died, including Anna Sheridan.

  But for decades, the Sheridan sisters had thought that their father had been the one driving the boat. They hadn’t been able to forgive him, and they hadn’t been able to come together as siblings. In fact, if Wes Sheridan hadn’t recently been diagnosed with early-onset dementia, something that had dragged Susan back from her criminal lawyer-life in Newark, the Sheridan sisters would have continued to live with the original lie.

  “Babe! What’s up?” Frank asked suddenly, as he burst through the door—nearly banging into her. “You haven’t been out with us for ages.”

  Christine gave a half-shrug. “I was only watching.”

  “That’s not like you,” Frank said. His smile was almost evilly handsome, the kind that twisted Christine’s stomach. “Get out here. Let’s dance.”

  Christine stepped back into the crowd. Her head buzzed with drink, and her smile stretched wider as Frank placed his hand on her stomach and brought her against him. Back in the height of Chez Frank, she and Frank had gone dancing a great deal—normally coming in around 9 p.m. and checking how much money they’d made for the night and then heading out to some of the most exclusive clubs across Manhattan. They’d hob-knobbed with celebrities and with politicians and with billionaires, who sometimes invited them to after-parties on boats or in penthouse apartments.

  Now that they were basically flat-broke, what the hell would they do?

  Christine glanced across the room and caught sight of Darla’s volatile blue eyes. Was she jealous that Christine danced so closely with Frank? Oh, but wasn’t Frank her actual boyfriend—hadn’t they lived together for over a year? Hadn’t they discussed the idea of adoption (only for Frank to veto it, due to the fact that he had a kid already from another relationship)? Still, there was ownership to Darla’s eyes, a sense that Christine had overstepped.

  Christine had been on the Vineyard for many weeks. It was possible that an affair had happened then, especially given Frank’s mental state after Christine had left. But if it had, what did she care? Wasn’t her and Frank’s relationship all tied up in this stupid restaurant? What on earth would it become, now that it had failed?

  The song ended. Christine strutted toward the drink table and sidled up next to two of the old bartenders, who grinned broadly at her.

  “Christine, it’s good to see you,” one of them, whose name was Marcus, said.

  She poured herself another glass of wine and clicked it with the scotch he was holding. “It’s good to be back, I guess.”

  “Frank wasn’t so sure you would come back,” Marcus affirmed. “He said that you returned home? That you grew up on Martha’s Vineyard?”

  Christine had never told Frank she’d even had the slightest inkling of returning to the Vineyard for good. In fact, she’d hardly allowed herself the thought. Throughout her weeks on the Vineyard, she and Frank had had many phone discussions—most of them screaming-matches—with Christine drunk and out of her mind with rage at his decisions, the way he had ruined them. Why had she returned again? She had wanted a new start.

  “Come on,” she said, her voice syrupy sweet. “You know the city is my home.”

  “Heck, if I had a place on Martha’s Vineyard, I’d be there all the time,” Marcus said. “It’s heaven on earth.”

  Christine sniffed. “If you had said that to me a few months ago, I might have smacked you across the face.”

  “But you fell in love with it again, didn’t you?” Marcus said.

  Christine pondered. She turned and leaned against the side of the table. Her heels felt ominous beneath her, as though she’d suddenly recognized just how tall they made her and just how uneasy she was after so many drinks. Suddenly, Frank stomped to the center of the room and clapped his massive hands. His dark curls shook, and he gave Christine a secret smile.

  “I just want to thank all of you for all your hard work over the years,” Frank said. “It’s been a joy to own Chez Frank. But I want to give a special thank you to my dear love, Christine Sheridan. This place would have found only half of its glory if it weren’t for your gorgeous pastries. You brought life and love to each and every day here. We thank you for that.”

  Everyone lifted their glasses, their eyes on Christine. Christine felt as though her head had been dunked deep underwater. She flashed a bright smile, lifted her glass, and then suddenly turned toward the front door, rushed out into the early-July heat, and vomited across the sidewalk. As the restaurant was located only a few blocks from Central Park, the clientele around the sidewalk were high-society, ritzy—the sort who didn’t necessarily like the concept of vomit splattering so close to their shoes. Christine placed a hand over her mouth, clamped her eyes shut, and willed herself anywhere else. A few moments later, she sucked in a deep breath, placed a hand against the wall as she tried to regain her composure.

  It all felt like too much. It was an ending without any concept of what was next. Her future looked bleak.

  Chapter Two

  Frank hailed a cab for the two of them. As Christine slid into the back seat, she used sloppy syllables to say, “I don’t know where you’re getting the money to pay for this. We’re broke, Frank. We should just walk home.”

  Frank was just as drunk as she was, perhaps more. This was their normal stance this late at night. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and cuddled her close, seeming to decide not to listen to her. As the tires cut out across the pavement, Christine remembered those perfect macarons, leftover on the countertop, probably next to three empty bottles of wine. Maybe they would be consumed by the last remaining party guests—people who could have just as well eaten fast-food desserts, not something that had taken Christine several hours to concoct, not to mention all those years at culinary school to master.

  They reached the apartment building. The doorman, Jeffrey, stepped out onto the sidewalk and opened the taxi door. His cheeks fell.

  “Mr. Bolton. Ms. Sheridan. Are you doing all right this evening?”

  The doormen at their apartment building hadn’t been necessarily welcoming in the weeks since they had learned Frank and Christine planned to move out. They were failures; there was nothing to be gained from being kind to them.

  “Quite all right,” Frank said. He stepped out onto the sidewalk and nearly toppled over. His large hand reached back to grip Christine’s.

  She hobbled out after him, grumbling. “I could have done it without you.”

  Frank whipped around and snorted. “If you actually think you can walk around on those heels of yours—all forty-one years of you.”

  Chr
istine’s eyes flashed. “So you’re saying that I’m too old to be drinking or too old to walk around in heels? What?”

  Frank staggered a bit. “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “Because you know I’m not Darla, right?” Christine continued. “I’m not some, late-twenties general manager with bright blonde hair and big tits and—”

  “You both really need to get inside,” the doorman boomed. He yanked open the door and gestured. “It’s against policy to let our residents have any sort of altercation outside.”

  Christine’s cheeks burned. How was it she had forgotten the doorman remained there with them, privy to this painfully idiotic conversation?

  “Come on,” Frank said. He grabbed her hand again and led her through the door. The doorman pushed the door closed after them. Frank muttered something under his breath about the doorman as he stabbed the elevator button for their floor, number six.

  Upstairs, Christine and Frank stepped into the apartment they had shared since the big cash had started to roll in from the restaurant. On the far wall was a large painting of Frank Sr., Frank’s long-dead father, whose vision of a Chez Frank had led Frank to open the Upper West Side place. In the painting, Frank Sr. was no more than thirty years old, his blue eyes serious and sure. Sometimes, when Frank was drunk, he felt that his father peered out through that painting, knowing all the ways his son had wronged his memory.

  Now, Frank stomped toward the painting, grabbed the edges, and smashed it to the ground. Christine smacked her hands over her lips and quaked. When Frank reared around, he brought his hands out, palms up, and studied them.

  “It always comes down to you just deciding that I’m the one to blame in all of this,” Frank said steadily.

  Christine’s nostrils flared. “You were the one who ran the restaurant in the ground.”

  “We’ve been over that,” Frank boomed. “Again and again. But I’m not talking about that. And neither were you, downstairs.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I said downstairs,” Christine said.