"No." She said it firmly. "Food is memory. Food is family. Food is the reason people stay at the table when they'd rather leave." She pointed at the pot. "That sauce. My nonna made it the first Sunday after my nonno died. She cooked for six hours. Fed half the neighborhood. People came, and they ate and they stayed, and nobody had to say anything, because the food said it."
I kept stirring. The sauce moved in slow, glossy circles.
"That's what those bastardi will never understand," Sofia continued. "They can copy a recipe. They can hire chefs and buy equipment and undercut your prices. But they can't cook with forty years of knowing why the food matters." A faraway look came into her eyes. "That's what we're building. You and I. Something they can't buy."
"Sofia Ferrari's Authentic Italian Cuisine," I said.
"And Nadia Becker's military background," she replied. "Don't underestimate your half. I know how to make the food. You know how to get it to the table while it's still worth eating." She tapped the bench with one finger. "Together we're formidable."
I tasted the sauce. Even my way, with the basil held back, it was extraordinary. The tomatoes were sweet and serious at the same time, the garlic was present without being aggressive, the slow cook having collapsed everything into something greater than its parts.
"It's going to be good," I said.
"It's going to be better than good." Sofia slid off her stool and came to stand beside me, looking into the pot like a general surveying favorable terrain. "Now. While we wait. Tell me how things are with Daemon."
I should have seen that coming. "Things are fine."
"Fine." She tasted the word the way she'd taste an under-seasoned sauce. "Fine, is what you say when you don't want to talk about something."
"Or when things are actually fine."
"He's scared," Sofia said. Not unkindly, but as a fact, the way she'd tell me to add more salt or stir faster. "He's been scared since the day I met him. He came here angry, and I fed him until the anger got quieter, and what was underneath it was fear."
She picked up the wooden spoon, tasted the sauce herself, and nodded once. "He's afraid of being the one who breaks something good. He did that before, when he was young, and he's never forgiven himself for it."
"I know about his past."
"Knowing about it and understanding it are different." She handed the spoon back. "He'll pull away. Probably already has a little." She looked at me sideways. "He has, hasn't he?"
She already knew the answer. I kept my eyes on the pot. "I can handle it."
"I know you can." Sofia patted my arm once, briskly, the way she did everything. "I'm not worried about you. I'm telling you because when it happens, you'll want to know it's not about you. It's about a boy who couldn't save his mother and has spent every waking minute since deciding that means he can't be trusted with anything he loves."
The kitchen was quiet except for the low bubble of the sauce and the distant sound of Sofia's radio somewhere else in the house.
"He's worth the patience," she said finally. "That's my two cents worth. But you didn't hear it from me."
"Hear what?" I said.
Sofia smiled and picked up the basil.
Our Lady of Sorrows held its Feast of Saint Francis on the last Saturday of the month, and Sofia had been feeding it for thirty-seven years.
She made sure I understood this on the drive over. To be fair, I'd had sloppier briefings in the military.
"The Ladies of the Altar Society," she said, her handbag balanced on her knees, "they think they run the kitchen. They do not run the kitchen. I run the kitchen. This year, they will discover I have a partner."
"Should I be concerned?"
"Only if you let them rattle you." She patted my hand. "They will try. Particularly Rosaria Benedetti. She has opinions about garlic."
"Doesn't everyone?" I replied. I knew I did.
"Rosaria's are wrong," said Sofia, with the serenity of a woman who'd made peace with this long ago. "You'll know her by the hat."
Daemon, who was driving my van because Sofia had decided he was our chauffeur for the day, snorted, although he soon turned this into a cough. His expression when I turned to look at him told me I was on my own with this one.
I looked away before I laughed.
