My legs decided they were done participating. I sank to the linoleum next to the broken eggs and the first sob escaped.
Anna dropped the broom. She was on the floor beside me in seconds, arms around my shoulders, pulling me into her. Moving carefully, because Anna was six months pregnant with twins and getting down to the floor was no longer a casual decision.
I cried until my chest hurt, my eyes burned, and there was nothing left. Then I sat there silently on the floor with my best friend’s arms around me, broken eggs spilling inside my grocery bag at my feet, and thought—very clearly—this is it. This is the last straw. The camel’s back is broken. The camel is dead. Someone should bury the camel.
Two weeks. That’s how long it took for my entire life to become unrecognizable.
I told Anna everything, piece by piece.
Sazón was closed. Shut down. Dead. A group of Christopher Vale fans smashed the windows two days after the story broke. Someone spray-paintedPOISONERacross the front door in red letters so bright they were visible from the end of the block. I’dscrubbed at it for an hour on my knees before Danny pulled me up and said it wasn’t coming off, that I needed to stop.
The health department came for anemergency inspectionthat felt more like a public execution. They found nothing wrong, because there was nothing wrong. I ran a clean kitchen and followed every protocol. The only thing I’d done wrong was trust two crew members who said a man loved kiwi when that man was deathly allergic to it. But the inspection was photographed. Posted. Commented on. And the comment section finished what the spray paint started.
Suppliers canceled. The landlord called to say he wasreviewing the lease, which was corporate talk for you’re done. The food blogger who called my tacos the best thing she’d eaten all year deleted the post like it had never existed.
I emptied the kitchen myself. Packed everything into boxes with masking tape and a marker. Danny helped carry the heavy stuff to the storage unit. Rosa sent a text with a praying hands emoji and a heart, and I cried over it for twenty minutes in my car.
Kevin got a job at a burger chain. Brittany was waitressing at a brunch spot across town. Danny picked up freelance work with a catering company that paid him half what I did. They didn’t leave because they wanted to. They left because I couldn’t pay them and I’d rather lose a hand than let someone work for me for free. I hugged each of them on their last day, smiled, and said I’d figure it out. Then I went home and didn’t get out of bed for two days.
The worst call that night came from Vicky.
My sister’s voice was scared and anxious.
“Greg’s lawyer filed a motion this morning,” she said.
My hand gripped the phone. “What kind of motion?”
“The restaurant was my only documented income source, and now it’s gone, so his team is arguing that Eloise would be better off…” She stopped, took a breath. “Better off with him.”
I closed my eyes. Greg. The man who’d cheated on my sister for two years while she worked at his family’s company. The man who told Vicky she wasoverreactingwhen she found the messages on his phone andbeing dramaticwhen she confronted him about the woman in accounting. When Vicky finally decided to leave, Greg’s family fired her. Just like that. Six years at the company and they escorted her out of the building the same week she filed for divorce.
No severance. No reference. Nothing.
She’d been looking for work since. Eleven months of applications, interviews, rejections. Watching her savings drain while Greg’s family spent money like water trying to take her daughter away.
“He doesn’t even want Eloise,” Vicky said, and her voice was so quiet I had to press the phone harder against my ear. “He doesn’t pick her up on time. He forgets her allergies. He took her to his girlfriend’s apartment last weekend and Eloise called me crying because she wanted to come home.” She paused. “He doesn’t even want her, Miley. He just wants to win.”
I sat on the edge of my bed and the guilt swallowed me from inside out. It was my restaurant. My signature dish. My kiwi coulis. And because of what I did, my sister’s income had evaporated and my five-year-old niece might end up spending the rest of her childhood with a father who treated her like a trophy instead of a child.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said, swallowing hard, trying to reassure her. “I promise.”
“Torres sisters never sink,” Vicky said. But her voice didn’t have the conviction it usually carried. It sounded like she wastesting the words to see if they still held weight, and she wasn’t sure they did.
After we hung up, I stared at the ceiling for a long time and tried to feel something other than guilty and came up empty.
Anna was ordering food now.
Thai food. Pad see ew, green curry, mango sticky rice. My comfort order.
She was still sitting cross-legged beside me on the floor, one hand resting on the swell of her belly. Six months along with twins, and Anna Hunter still showed up at my apartment armed with a broomstick and zero regard for her own physical limitations. Getting here had apparently been its own battle. She told me, while we waited for the delivery, that Jace had already started putting on his shoes and reaching for the car keys before she’d even finished saying she was visiting her best friend alone.
“He said he’d wait in the car,” she told me, rolling her eyes with the exasperation of a woman who loved her husband deeply and also wanted to pull his ear on a daily basis. “I said no. He saidwhat if something happens. I said Miley lives in a studio apartment, not a war zone.”
“How’d you finally get him to stay?” I asked.
Anna’s expression turned devious. “I told him your apartment was infested with maggots.”
I stared at her. “You told your germophobe husband that my apartment has maggots.”
