I lean back, abandoning the pretense of work. “My mother used to take us to the bay every Sunday after mass. Not the beach, this hidden spot she knew, where the mangroves made these natural pools.”
“Just you and Marisol?”
“Yep. She’d bring this massive picnic basket, way too much food. Said it was because we were growing kids. She’d laugh. She laughed a lot, before she got sick.”
Sera glances at me, reading something in my voice. “You miss her.”
“Every day. She always thought I was the good kid. I think that’s partly why I chose the seminary when my life went to hell, no pun intended. To be even better.”
She doesn’t offer empty comfort, just nods and keeps cooking.
She reaches for something on a high shelf, shirt riding up to show a strip of skin at her waist. I lose the thread of whatever I was thinking. She knows, catches my stare in the microwave’s reflection, smiles without turning.
“Twenty minutes to simmer,” she says, adjusting the flame. The way she moves, comfortable in my space, makes my chest tight with want.
I catch myself humming, the same tune she was humming, picked up without thought. When did that start? My throat making music instead of measured prayer. She notices, pauses with the spoon suspended, but doesn’t comment. Just smiles this small, private smile
that I file away with the one from earlier.
“What about you?” I ask. “Before everything got complicated. What were you going to be?”
She laughs, but it’s not bitter. “A chef. Can you believe that? I was saving for culinary school, working three jobs. Then I met…” She catches herself. “Then life took a different turn. Seemed easier than three jobs and a studio apartment with roaches.”
“Do you regret it?”
She considers, absently stirring the pot. “I regret what I let it turn me into. But meeting you? Being here? This only happens because of all that. So maybe regret’s the wrong word.”
The simplicity of it, the admission that our damage led us to each other, settles something in me. We’re not broken people despite our pasts. We’re whole people because of them.
She sets down the spoon, turns to face me. “We need to stop by the cottage later. I left my good shoes there. And my laptop.”
The drive to her cottage takes only minutes, but with each turn, the knot in my stomach tightens. When we pull into the gravel driveway, I know immediately. The cottage squats in the evening light looking wrong.
The front door hangs slightly open, not smashed, just ajar, like someone wants us to know they were here. Professional. Deliberate.
“Stay in the car,” I tell Sera.
She doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.
The cottage has been tossed systematically. Kitchen cabinets opened, spices scattered.
“My laptop,” she manages. “It’s gone.”
The laptop with her research. Her notes on the vault code. How much did she have on there? How much do they know now?
The Gabriel from this morning, smiling, humming, burning oatmeal, evaporates. What replaces him has been sleeping for a long time but wakes up fully functional. I sweep the cottagesystematically, checking for bugs, cameras, anything they might have left. My body remembers the protocol: corners first, then surfaces, then anyplace with power outlets.
“Don’t touch anything else,” I tell her, pulling out my phone.
The number I dial comes from memory. All these years, and my fingers still know it.
“Logan.”
“It’s Gabriel.”
A pause. Then Logan’s voice, not surprised but sharper: “What’s changed?”
“The cottage where Sera was staying has been tossed. Professional entry. They wanted us to know. They took her laptop. They’re escalating.”
