Personal chef Beau St. Clair, recently divorced from his cheating husband, returns to the small Ohio River town where he grew up to lick his wounds. Jack Rogers lives with his mother, Maisie, in that same small town, angry at and frightened by the world. Jack has a gap in his memory that hides something he dares not face, and he’s probably suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Maisie, seeking relief from her housebound and often surly son, hires Beau to cook for Jack, hoping the change might help bring Jack, once a handsome and vibrant attorney, back to his former self. But can a new face and comfort food compensate for the terror lurking in Jack’s past? Slowly the two men begin a dance of revelation and healing. Food and compassion build a bridge between Beau and Jack, a bridge that might lead to love. But will Jack’s demons allow it? His history could just as easily tear them apart as bring them together.

Dinner at Jack's

“Yeah.” I waited for the next words to come but found myself scrambling, trying on and discarding ideas for various ways to tell her what I recalled.


“Jackson is Jack’s given name,” Maisie said. “It’s, uh, the only legacy of his dad, who didn’t stick around to see him grow up. Jackson was hismiddle name, and I think, although I don’t know it as fact, that Jackson was probably his mother’s maiden name.”


“So why did you call him that? I ask because when Jack moved away from here, he kind of reinvented himself, and even though all his life he’d been Jack, he started referring to himself as Jackson.”


Maisie prodded. “Did you know Jackson? Did you know my son? Before?”


I scanned the horizon for a long time, wondering what just the right words might be. But I eventually came to the conclusion that most often, the right words were the simplest ones. Or in this case, in this moment, one. “Yes.”


Chapter 40