Page 53 of Knight
I pull out eggs. Butter. The good turkey. I crack six eggs into a bowl because I can, because there are more in the carton, because for the first time in two years cracking six eggs does not mean recalculating whether I can afford a second carton before Friday.
Tomás appears in the kitchen doorway wearing the new pajamas I bought him yesterday with money that appeared in my account like weather — sudden, massive, originating from a system I barely understand.
He eats three eggs scrambled, two pieces of toast with butter on both sides, a glass of orange juice, and half a banana. He eats the way a boy eats when his body has been hungry longer than his mind admits — fast, grateful, reaching for seconds before the firsts are finished because somewhere deep in his ten-year-old brain the fridge might be empty tomorrow.
Marisol eats differently.
She sits at the counter with her plate centered in front of her and she cuts everything into precise, equal pieces. One bite at a time. Chewing slowly. Her eyes moving between the food and the kitchen and the windows and me. She eats like she's taking inventory — measuring exactly how much she consumes, keeping track of the debt.
I know what she's doing because I did the same thing the first time a foster family fed me a meal that didn't come from a microwave. I ate carefully. I ate quietly. I made myself small at the table because taking too much meant owing too much and owing meant losing.
My sister is sitting in a penthouse kitchen eating scrambled eggs like they come with terms and conditions.
The security Romeo promised is here. My siblings are fed. The shutoff notice is a ghost from another life.
So is the feeling that I know exactly what everything costs.
In this kitchen, I don't. And the silence where that knowledge used to sit is louder than any neighbor's television.
One Square at a Time
Guido arrives without announcement.
He appears in the kitchen doorway the way I've seen Dante appear — suddenly, silently, as though the penthouse produced him from a wall. But where Dante carries his stillness like a loaded weapon, Guido carries his like camouflage. He's learned to take up less space than his body requires. Eighteen years old, broad-shouldered, Giovanni's face wearing darker, warmer eyes — and he moves through the doorway like a man who has spent most of his life practicing how to enter a room without being noticed.
He nods at me. A small gesture, respectful, the kind of greeting that doesn't demand a response. Then his eyes land on Tomás, who is licking butter off his fingers and studying the chess app on a tablet Romeo left on the counter.
"You play?" Guido asks.
Tomás looks up. "I don't know how."
Something shifts in Guido's face. A softening I didn't expect from a Rivas — a crack in the practiced blankness that these brothers wear like family uniform. He pulls a wooden case from under his arm — I didn't even see him carrying it — and sets it on the counter. The latch clicks and he unfolds a proper chess board with carved pieces lined up in felt grooves. Each one polished. Each one placed with a care that tells me this set is more than a hobby.
"I'll teach you," Guido says, and slides onto the stool beside my brother like he's done this a thousand times.
He hasn't. I can tell by the way his hands hesitate before picking up the first piece — a small, round figure with a flat top.He holds it between his thumb and forefinger and sets it on the board.
"This is a pawn," he says.
Tomás leans in. His elbows on the counter, his chin in his hands, his entire ten-year-old body vibrating with the particular intensity of a boy who has just been given attention by an older male and will absorb every syllable like sunlight.
"Pawns move one square at a time," Guido says. He slides the piece forward. "Always forward. Never back."
The words settle into me.
I'm standing at the sink rinsing Marisol's plate and I hear them land — one square at a time, always forward, never back — and something in the way Guido's voice drops onnever backtells me he's describing more than a chess piece. He's describing a philosophy. A survival code. The rule he learned in whatever version of childhood the Rivas family gave him — which, from everything I've pieced together, was an education in staying alive by staying invisible.
"What happens when a pawn gets to the other side?" Tomás asks.
Guido looks at him. A real look — full, direct, the kind of eye contact his older brothers ration like ammunition.
"It becomes anything it wants." He sets another piece on the board. "A queen. A knight. A rook. Whatever the player needs it to be."
"Cool." Tomás picks up a pawn and turns it in his fingers the same way Guido did. Studying it. Already memorizing.
Guido catches me watching from across the kitchen. Our eyes meet for half a second and I see something in his that makes my chest ache — recognition. The look of someone who knows exactly what it costs to be young in a world that refuses to let you stay that way. He sees it in Tomás. He sees it in me seeing it.
He looks away first. Back to the board. Back to teaching my brother how a piece with no power can cross the entire field and become the most dangerous thing on it.
