It was different for Ellie—Ellie relished her newfound work-life balance, and she seemed to have no worries at all about how quiet everything was right now. Ellie could pick her kid up from school, go to teacher conferences without having to balance the needs of clients and demanding senior partners, and have dinner with her family every night. And Ellie had a husband to fall back on, one who made a substantial salary of his own. She didn’t have to support herself or worry that she might have to cash in her 401(k) if this venture of theirs didn’t work. Olivia didn’t resent Ellie for any of that, and she didn’t doubt her passion for their firm, but it was just fact.

On her date with Max, she’d had to pretend she was successful, confident, and oh so busy. The whole time he’d asked about their firm, she’d held back her anxiety and fear and doubt, and put on her Proud Businesswoman/Boss Lady hat. And while she was proud of herself and her firm, she was also terrified.

What could she do now, this afternoon, to make this firm a success? She’d networked her ass off at the bar association on Monday night. But there wasn’t anything else going on tonight that she could find, for either lawyers or small businesses.

Hmmm. She flicked through a bunch of the tabs she had open on her computer. That wasn’t until next week, that was invitation only, that one cost too much . . . oh, wait. The food pantry! One of their volunteer times was Wednesday night at six. Perfect.

At exactly 5:55 p.m., Olivia jumped out of the car in front of the community center and thanked the driver. She looked down at her outfit and made a face; she was in slim black pants, a silk blouse, and pointy black flats, which probably wasn’t the best outfit for volunteering. This had been her work uniform when she lived in New York—there it was perfect: almost always work appropriate, easy to dress up with a blazer and heels—but here in L.A. it seemed way too dressy for almost everything she did.

She walked into the building and followed the signs to the food pantry.

“Hi,” she said to the person at the door. “I’m here to volunteer. I’m Olivia Monroe.”

The woman at the door grinned and shook her hand.

“Hi, Olivia Monroe, I’m Jamila Carter. I’m the coordinator here. Welcome. Since this is your first time, I’ll show you around and get you ready to start.”

Olivia liked the looks of Jamila—somewhere in her late twenties, with long braids piled up into a huge bun on top of her head and a clipboard in her hand. Olivia instinctively trusted someone holding a clipboard.

“Is it that obvious that it’s my first time?” Olivia asked as they walked into the kitchen. “I should have worn something different, but I kind of came on the spur of the moment.”

Jamila laughed and shook her head.

“Your outfit is fine.” She stopped and looked Olivia over. “Well, okay, I see what you mean, but we’ll give you an apron. It wasn’t that; it’s that I’ve worked here since the beginning, so I kind of recognize everyone at this point. How did you find out about us?”

Olivia looked around the large, busy kitchen and was suddenly very glad she’d come tonight.

“I moved to L.A. pretty recently—I just started my own law firm here—and one of the board members brought me to the luncheon last week. I don’t live that far away, so I thought I’d help out.” She looked around. “This place is a lot bigger than I expected.”

Jamila set her clipboard down on the counter.

“This is the cafeteria from when this building was an elementary school. The food pantry started here on a much smaller scale when the community center first opened, just as a place for people to leave donations for community members in need, and we still have that. But after a while we all saw the need for meals for our elderly and homebound members, and I asked around to see if we could get larger-scale food donations to cook with. One thing led to another, and about a year ago we started this community kitchen and meal delivery service as a part of the food pantry.”

Olivia looked around the room. Everything looked clean and organized, with big piles of produce in stacks. Other volunteers—mostly older Black women, but lots of other ages and ethnicities, too—came in and put on aprons and said hi to Jamila.

“This is great. So you’ve been here from the beginning?”

Jamila waved at someone who’d just walked in.

“I have, and we’ve really grown. We started off with just a volunteer event on Friday nights once a month—at first, we really didn’t know what we were doing, and just sort of made big vats of soup or whatever based around our donations that week. Now we’re here twice weekly; on our Wednesday and Friday nights, we bring in volunteers to make complete, wholesome meals for members of our community who can’t get outside or cook for themselves easily. On Thursdays and Saturdays we have other sets of volunteers who do our deliveries. We try to make enough food each night for thirty to forty people, though our goal is to increase that to a hundred by the end of this year.”

Olivia hadn’t quite realized—despite Jamila’s mention of an apron—that she’d be cooking tonight.

“That’s an impressive goal,” she said. “To go from making thirty to forty meals to a hundred.”

Olivia really hoped they would give her very clear instructions with this whole cooking thing; that had never been her strong suit. She looked around at the ingredients set out at the different stations.

“How do you figure out what to make from week to week?”

Jamila smiled.

“That’s where I come in—I’ve worked as a cook in restaurants for a while. I’ve figured out a lot of recipes that work with some of our most frequent food donations, and that our community members will like.”

“Wow,” Olivia said. “That’s impressive. I bet that was a real challenge. They’re lucky to have you.”

Jamila handed her an apron.

“Well thank you, but I’m lucky to have this place, too. It feels good to give back, yes, but I feel like I’m getting a lot in return.” She stopped and bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I’m going on and on about this—I can talk about this place for hours.”

Olivia shook her head.

“No problem. Where do we start?”

Jamila led her over to one of the counters.

“Okay, on a scale of one to ten, how good of a cook are you? With one being, like, you can barely open a can and heat up the food inside, and ten at, say, you’re a restaurant chef. Be honest, no judgment.”

Olivia laughed.

“Probably somewhere around a three? Maybe a four, in a pinch? I can definitely open up cans of food and heat them up, but I don’t quite know the difference between what it means to sauté something or braise it.”

Jamila steered her in front of a big bowl.

“Okay, perfect—tonight we’re making turkey meatballs with mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach. I’m going to put you on meatball duty; no chopping or sautéing involved, you’re just going to mix together a bunch of ingredients and then roll it all into meatballs. How does that sound?”

Olivia laughed to herself. This was definitely not what she thought she’d be doing tonight when she woke up this morning.

“That sounds great,” she said.