Page 6 of Devotion
I winced. Aunt Eliza. Even from a hospital bed recovering from a stroke, the woman managed to plant seeds of poison in a five-year-old’s vocabulary. Some talents are just God-given, I guess.
We hung up. I stood at the prep station with flour on my hands and Boyz II Men still going. The morning light drifted across the dining room floor, and I let myself breathe through it for exactly ten seconds before I packed it away and got back to work.
That’s what we did. The Torres sisters never sink. We made dough, opened restaurants, showed up, kept going, because the alternative was giving up, and giving up meant proving Aunt Eliza right. I’d eat glass before I gave that woman the satisfaction.
More importantly, I owed it to Vicky. She believed in me. She believed in my restaurant. The least I could do was help her through this. I’d do whatever I could to help her win this custody battle. I was the only person she could truly count on.
Our parents died before either of us could form lasting memories of them. Mom died during my birth, a fact Dad’s elder sister, Eliza, never let me forget. Whenever she visited us, she had a way of mentioning it at the worst possible moments, like it was a fun fact she couldn’t resist sharing.
“Your mother would still be alive if it wasn’t for you.” She’d say it while passing the salt at dinner, or folding laundry, or standing in the doorway of our room at night like she’d come to deliver a bedtime story and chose that one instead. Then Dad died in a car accident when I was four and Vicky was nine. After that, we had to shift with Eliza permanently. The only familywilling to take in two orphaned girls, or at least, the only family willing to take the credit for it.
Eliza didn’t beat us, didn’t starve us. She fed us, clothed us, put a roof over our heads, but reminded us of the cost every single day. We were charity cases in her house, two extra mouths she hadn’t planned for, and she made sure we understood the math of it. Her biological daughter, Elspeth, got the piano lessons, the bedroom with the window, and the new school uniforms.
On the other hand, Vicky and I got hand-me-downs, a shared room at the back of the house, and the phrase “you should be grateful” delivered so often it might as well have been our middle names.
Vicky shielded me from the worst of it. She was only nine when she became my mother, my protector, my translator for a world that didn’t want us. She’d crawl into my bed on the nights Eliza said something that cut too deep and whisper “Torres sisters never sink” into my hair until I fell asleep. She was the one who taught me to cook, actually. Not Eliza.
Eliza assigned cooking as a chore, but Vicky turned it into something else. She’d stand beside me at the stove and say, “Taste this. What’s missing?” And I’d think about it, really think, and I’d add a pinch of something and Vicky would nod and say, “See? You’ve got the gift.”
But even Vicky was taken from me when Aunt Eliza sent her to a private boarding school.
I was left to survive public school and its bullies alone.
I was fifteen when I almost faded. Not in a way anyone could see. It was the quieter kind, where you find yourself sitting on a bathroom floor at night, and the world feels so heavy and so empty at the same time that you start wondering if anyone would notice if you just disappeared.
Then I foundhim.
It was an accident. I was scrolling through my phone with blurry eyes and a chest full of nothing, and I clicked on some random interview clip. A twenty-year-old on a talk show. Dark hair, blue eyes, a charming face. He was talking about growing up unwanted, and the host was trying to steer the conversation toward something lighter, but this stranger wouldn’t let her. He looked straight at the camera and said, “You don’t have to earn the right to exist. You just do.”
I played that clip six times. Seven. Eight. Until my phone died and I had to plug it in and I was still sitting there on the cold tile watching him. Something had shifted in me that day. A quiet beginning, but it was enough to give me a place to start. Like someone had cracked a window in a room that had been sealed shut, and a thin ray of hope got through.
Christopher Vale.
That was his name. I watched his every interview after that. Every film. Every press tour. He became the voice in my head on the bad nights, the proof that someone could come from nothing and still become something. He probably had no idea he’d saved a little girl’s life from a bathroom floor in Miami.
Most people don’t know when they save someone. They just say the right thing at the right time and move on, never knowing the weight of what they left behind. The lives they might have saved.
I hadn’t thought about that bathroom floor in years. I didn’t need to anymore. I had Sazón. I had Vicky, Eloise, my bestie Anna, and a life I’d built with my own hands from ingredients nobody thought I could afford.
Which brings me back to the morning, which had been good so far. Dangerously, suspiciously good.
Sazón existed because our parents, even dead, loved us better than the woman who raised us. They’d set up a trust fund before they died, split between Vicky and me. We didn’t know about ituntil six months ago, when a lawyer called and said the words “your parents’ inheritance” and I had to pull my car over because I couldn’t see the road through the tears.
Eliza tried to claim it. Argued that as our legal guardian, she had the right to manage it. She almost won. She would have, if not for Eleanor.
I met Eleanor at a community legal aid event. A sharp, silver-haired woman with pearl earrings, her shoulders pulled straight, as if she’d never slouched a day in her life. She overheard me explaining the trust fund situation to a volunteer attorney who was clearly out of his depth, and joined the conversation the way a lifeguard dives into water when someone is drowning.
She had connections and made calls, putting Vicky and me in touch with a real estate attorney. Within two months, the fund was released to us the way our parents had intended.
After that, I met Eleanor a few times. She showed up at the community cooking classes I taught on weekends. Called every few weeks to check in, asking me about the restaurant, and requesting not to overwork myself. But without fail, every single conversation, she found a way to mention her grandson. “Handsome. Single. Very successful. You’d love him.” I’d laugh and change the subject. I’d never seen a photo of this mysterious grandson and was starting to suspect he was imaginary.
I used my half of the trust fund to open Sazón. Vicky invested hers as a silent partner—she believed in my cooking, and her divorce had drained all her savings. So she needed the income.
Sazón wasn’t just my dream. It was both ourlifeline.
Three months in. Twelve-hour days, feet that ached in places I didn’t know could ache, and a savings account that made me wince every time I checked the balance. But we were growing. The reviews were good. Last week, a food blogger with eighty thousand followers posted a photo of my braised short rib tacos and called them “the best thing I’ve eaten this year.” I’dscreenshotted the review and sent it to Anna. She replied the next minute.
ANNA
