Do not let anyone shame you out of what is yours. That includes your mother. That includes the voice in your head that says you don’t know what you are doing. That voice is a liar. Listen to mine.
I want to laugh and scream. I want to go into the kitchen and tell her she is arrogant and kiss her cheek, and steal a meatball. I press the page to my face. It smells like paper. It smells like nothing. It smells like her because my brain says it does.
Footsteps behind me on the steps. Zia sits, careful, like she doesn’t want to scare me off like a skittish bird. She hands me a mug. Coffee. No milk. No sugar. The way I learned to drink it in culinary school.
“She always said,” Zia says, sipping, “that if she didn’t make someone mad in a day, she didn’t earn her sleep.”
“She made Mama mad for a year,” I say. It comes out light. It isn’t.
“Your mother will come back to herself,” Zia says. “She loves you, and she loved her mother, and those are two dogs fighting in her head right now. They will stop barking.” She leans against me, shoulder to shoulder. “What does your letter say?”
“That she did me a favor,” I say. “That I can say no.”
“You can,” Zia agrees. “We will still feed you.”
I take a breath that rattles a little. “I don’t know what I want.”
“Good.” She nudges me with her elbow. “That means you are thinking. People who always know scare me.”
“Nonna always knew,” I say.
“No,” Zia says. “She just worked fast until it looked like she knew.”
I stare at the fig leaves until they become only green. “She made me a new key for the restaurant.”
Zia smiles into her mug. “Of course she did. She always loved the drama.”
We sit until the coffee cools. The house murmurs behind us—the clatter of cups, the rise and fall of voices, the soft whistleof the kettle. I am aware of the weight of responsibility—of the house behind me, of the restaurant that sits empty today. I can hear Regalia in my head: the scrape of chairs, the ring of the bell when the back door opens for deliveries, the hiss of the espresso machine.
Eventually, I go back inside because not going back inside is not a thing in my family. I wash my cup even though Zia tells me to leave it. I put it on the rack. I turn to the key hook by the back door and see the brand new key to Regalia.
The old one would’ve worked just fine, but Nonna always did have a thing for symbolism. New key, new future.
Zia must see me stressing over it.
“Later,” Zia says, which is her version of “rest.” “Now I will go home and get a bag. We will sleep here. Tomorrow you will go to the restaurant and see it in the morning before anyone else does. That will tell you more than any letter.”
“Chef Sorrentino expects me back,” I say, because the practical will not be shut up by fig trees and keys. “He told me the late summer menu would be mine to run.”
“Call him,” Zia says. “Tell him your grandmother died. Anyone who doesn’t understand that is not someone you work for.”
“He understands,” I say immediately, loyal because he has been good to me. “He sent flowers.”
“Then he will understand another day,” she says. “Do not build a life on someone else’s clock.”
I tuck the key into my pocket. It is heavy for its size.
Slowly, the house quiets down as people have found their separate corners. The baby sleeps with his mouth open. Mr. Caruso is gone. The cookie tin is open and half-full. Mama sits on the couch with her shoes off and her feet curled under her like a girl. She looks at me like she is measuring how much I will break if she says something unkind. She must decide I am breakable. She presses her lips together and says nothing.
“Come,” Zia says to her. “Lie down.”
“I can’t sleep in this house,” Mama whispers. She is honest enough not to dress it up.
“So don’t,” Zia says, and it is decided.
We get her into Zia’s car with the seats permanently smelling like pine from the air freshener she insists on, even though her children have begged her to throw them out. Mama leans her head against the window like a kid. Everyone else files out after them.
Once they’re all gone, I go back into the house and close the door behind me, and the quiet that follows is substantial.
