The man on stage, the famous chef Julian Kent, was selling my mother’s life story as his own, and I was standing in the back of the room watching him do it.
He called his new cookbook Inheritance, a slick lie packaged for morning TV. My mother’s recipes, her memories, her actual handwriting—he claimed it all.
For fifteen years, I was his ghost. I wrote the books that made him a star, all for a flat fee and a crushing non-disclosure agreement.
But this wasn’t just another job. This was my family. He thought his money and his high-priced lawyers made him untouchable.
He thought he owned my story, but he was about to learn that you can’t buy the truth, especially when you serve it up for the whole world to see on a twelve-dollar website.
A Measure of Memory
The scent of browned butter and apples, so deeply caramelized they smelled almost like smoke, filled my small kitchen. It was the scent of my mother. I ran a finger over the spine of her journal, the leather worn smooth and dark in the places her own hands had held it most. The page for her “Mountain Apple Stack Cake” was dotted with ancient splashes of vanilla and one dark, mysterious stain I always imagined was coffee from a frantic morning thirty years ago.
My own notebook sat beside it, a stark white Moleskine filled with precise measurements and conversion notes. My job, for the last fifteen years, had been to be a ghost. I was the one who translated the chaotic genius of chefs into recipes that a person with a normal kitchen and a single oven could actually make. My specialty was taking a feeling—like the one I got from this worn journal—and turning it into grams and teaspoons.
“Just get the layers right, Allie-cat,” my mom used to say, her voice a low hum in my memory. “The rest is just patience.”
I was meticulously layering the last thin, apple-butter-slathered cake disc when my phone buzzed on the granite countertop. The name on the screen made my stomach do a familiar little flip: JULIAN KENT. The celebrity chef. My boss. The man whose face was on three bestselling cookbooks I had written every single word of.
I wiped my sticky fingers on my apron and answered. “Alice.”
“Alice, my star! How are you?” His voice was a boom of manufactured warmth, the kind he used on morning television. “Listen, I’ve had an epiphany. A legacy-making, brand-defining lightning bolt. We need to talk. My office. Tomorrow, ten a.m.?”
My heart hammered against my ribs. A legacy. That was the word he used. I looked at my mother’s journal, at her familiar, loopy handwriting. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the moment I could finally step out from behind the curtain.
“I have an idea, too, Julian,” I said, a surge of courage surprising me. “I think you’re going to love it.”
The Glass Castle
Julian Kent’s office was on the 34th floor of a steel and glass tower that stabbed the Chicago skyline. It was less an office and more a testament to his own brand. A massive, professionally shot portrait of him laughing with a wooden spoon took up an entire wall. The air smelled of expensive citrus cleaner and, faintly, of him—a sharp, sandalwood cologne.
I clutched my canvas tote bag, the weight of my mother’s journal inside both a comfort and a terror. Julian swept into the room, all brilliant white teeth and perfectly tousled hair. He was wearing a ridiculously expensive cashmere sweater that made him look like he’d just stepped off a yacht.
“Alice! So good to see you.” He gestured to a severe-looking leather chair. “So, you have an idea for me. I’m all ears.”
My hands trembled as I carefully pulled the journal from my bag and placed it on the vast, empty expanse of his glass desk. “This was my mother’s,” I began, my voice steadier than I expected. “She wasn’t a chef. She was just… a brilliant cook. From Appalachia. Everything she knew is in here. Her stories, her recipes. It’s real, Julian. It’s the kind of authentic, heritage cooking people are desperate for.”
He picked it up, his manicured hands looking alien against the worn leather. He flipped through the pages, his eyes scanning the handwritten notes. I could see the marketer in him whirring to life. He wasn’t seeing my mother’s soul; he was seeing a hook.
“Alice, this is gold,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “Pure gold. Rustic. Authentic. A lost family history.” He looked up at me, his eyes gleaming. “The publisher is offering a seven-figure advance for my next project. This is it. This is the one.”
I felt a dizzying wave of relief. It was happening. After all the years of silent work, of seeing my recipes under his name, this was my chance to honor her. “I’m so glad you see it,” I said, a genuine smile spreading across my face for the first time that day.
He leaned back in his chair, a king surveying his new territory. “The concept is perfect. We’ll call it Julian Kent’s Inheritance. We’ll do a photoshoot in a rustic-looking farmhouse. It’s going to be my masterpiece.”
About the Author
