“They were Nana’s specialty. She made them every Sunday.” Her grief rose between them, the ache she carried always, just beneath the surface. “The recipe’s been in our family for generations. Selkie tradition says the honey sweetens whatever sadness you’re carrying.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes.” She stepped away, and he immediately missed the warmth. “Sometimes it just means you cry while you bake.”
She turned to check the oven, and Alessandro watched her: the way she moved through the kitchen like it was an extension of herself, the flour dusting her hair, the ease that hid so much pain.
“The curse,” he said suddenly. The words came out before he could stop them. “It’s like that. The sadness that never quite goes away.”
She turned back, waiting.
“My father pretends it isn’t happening,” he continued. “Loses money every quarter and acts like everything is fine. My mother watches him pretend and says nothing.” Alessandro’s dragon stirred, and he had to breathe carefully to keep it contained. “I grew up watching the search swallow the people I loved, one by one. I told myself I’d be the one who finally solved it instead of being solved by it.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It is.” He stared at the batter. “I’ve been searching for ten years. I don’t know if I’m getting closer or just running in circles. And the curse keeps accelerating, keeps taking more, and I can’t?—”
He stopped, swallowing hard.
Marina crossed the kitchen and pressed a cookie into his hand. Chocolate chip. Still warm from an earlier batch.
“Eat this,” she said.
“I don’t?—”
“Eat it.”
He ate it. It was perfect: chewy in the middle, crisp at the edges, the chocolate still melted.
“Better?” she asked.
“How is a cookie supposed to fix…”
“It’s not fixing anything. It’s just a moment where you don’t have to fix anything.” She leaned against the counter beside him. “You can’t solve the curse by being miserable every second. Sometimes you just need a cookie.”
His defenses gave way. Not his control; he’d felt that break before, in boardrooms and courtrooms, always followed by fire and regret. This was softer.
“Your grandmother sounds wise,” he said.
“She was. Is.” Marina caught herself. “That’s the strange thing about grief. Sometimes I forget she’s gone. I’ll see something funny and think, ‘Nana would love that.’ And then I remember.”
Alessandro nodded slowly. He knew that feeling: the phantom presence of someone who should still be there. His grandfather’s voice in his head, offering advice about contracts. The way he sometimes reached for his phone to call and share news before remembering there was no one on the other end anymore.
“The recipe book,” he said. “The one you opened yesterday. She wrote that?”
“Every recipe in it. Some are generations old, passed down through the family. Others she created herself.” Marina’s hand went to her grandmother’s locket, a gesture Alessandro hadnoticed she made whenever she talked about the past. “She always said baking was a form of magic. That you put love into the food and it feeds more than just bodies.”
“That sounds like something my grandfather would have understood. He believed in things too.” Alessandro paused. “Before the curse took that from him.”
“What happened? If you don’t mind me asking.”
It was a fair question. She’d shared her grief with him. Now it was his turn.
“He spent his whole life searching for a cure. Traveled the world. Consulted every specialist, every curse-breaker, every ancient text he could find. And in the end he died broke in a rented walk-up, pawning the last of the family’s heirlooms to keep the lights on. Nothing but regrets.” Alessandro lowered his voice. “The last time I saw him, he told me not to make his mistakes. To live my life instead of chasing something that might not exist. And then he asked me to promise I’d break the curse.”
“That’s contradictory.”
“I know. I’ve spent ten years trying to honor both requests and failing at both.” He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I don’t know how to live and search at the same time. I don’t know how to stop searching when my whole family is counting on me.”
