Page 97 of Devotion
“I’ve never been sure of anything in my life except this.”
“You’re going to make me cry in the kitchen and I have a reputation to maintain.”
“What reputation?”
“As someone who doesn’t cry in kitchens.”
I cupped her face with both hands. “I love you, Miley Torres.”
“I love you too, impossible man.”
She kissed me. In the kitchen that smelled like garlic and rosemary and dinner. And it tasted like the beginning of something without an expiration date.
I didn't know where I was going until she happened to me.
Because every version of myself led back to her. The tired one, the hopeful one, the one who was still learning how to love again.
When things fell apart, she was what remained. When courage returned, it started with her name.
So when life asked where it began and where it ended, I already knew.
It was always, quietly, been her.
Epilogue
MILEY
Eight months later
Sazón was open and thriving. The reopening drew press coverage money couldn’t buy, partly the story of a chef who survived a scandal and rebuilt from the rubble, partly because the food was exceptional and I wasn’t being humble about that. I’d earned it.
Danny came back first. He walked into the new kitchen, ran his hand along the counter, and said “Chef” in a voice that made me blink fast and pretend I had something in my eye. Rosa came next. She looked around, nodded once, and said “Better.” From Rosa, that was a standing ovation. Kevin was on dishes. Brittany ran front of house. I’d added two line cooks and a pastry chef named Lena whose croissants had a three-week waitlist and a fan account on social media.
Christopher’s career had gone global again. He’d taken a period drama role that filmed in London next month. He asked me to come. I said yes on the condition that I could bring frozen meal containers because I didn’t trust British food. He told me I’d offend an entire country. I said they’d survive.
Dominic was better, though not cured. The cancer was in remission, but we avoided that word because Dominic said it tempted fate. He was back at Vale Industries in a limited capacity, working from a redesigned office that Christopher had personally overseen. Christopher stepped down as CEO two months ago. The transition was smooth, the company stable, the legacy secure.
The brothers weren’t close the way families are in movies. But they talked. Christopher visited Dominic’s house instead of the hospital now. Last week they watched a basketball game and argued about the referees for two hours and it was the most normal interaction they’d had in thirty years. Progress wasn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it was two men yelling at a television screen and eating pizza and pretending the silence between them didn’t carry thirty years of weight.
Eleanor was well. She called me every Sunday for hour-long conversations covering recipes, gossip, and unfiltered opinions about the neighbors. Last week she told me the woman across the street had “terrible taste in hedges” and I laughed until I cried.
Vicky won the custody case. Greg’s lawyers folded after Vale Industries’ legal team entered the picture, and Vicky’s documented income from her new position made their financial instability argument collapse. Eloise was staying with her mother, full time.
When the judge read the decision, Vicky called me from the courthouse steps, sobbing, and said “You did this.” I said Christopher did this. She said “Then tell that man I love him and I’m naming my next child after him.” I told Christopher. He said “Eloise is enough. One small person threatening me is my limit.”
Anna had the twins nine months ago. Two girls. Harper and Grace. Jace, who had spent the entire pregnancy buying onesies and whispering stock prices to his wife’s stomach, heldhis daughters for the first time and cried without shame in a hospital room full of people. Anna said it was the only time she’d ever seen him lose composure.
The man who sanitized everything he touched held his newborn daughters with bare hands and a face full of wonder and kissed their foreheads and told them they were the most beautiful things he’d ever seen.
I visited them last week. Harper had Jace’s serious expression, even at nine months old. Grace had Anna’s nose and a tendency to grab fingers with a grip that suggested she’d be running something someday. Jace held Grace in one arm and a bottle in the other and when a drop of formula landed on his sleeve, he looked at it, looked at his daughter, and decided it could stay. Anna caught my eye across the room and mouthed “Progress.” I mouthed back “Miracle.”
I was on the phone with Anna after closing one evening, standing in Sazón’s kitchen, one hand resting on my stomach. The restaurant was dark and quiet, just the hum of the refrigerator and the faint city sounds from outside and the warmth of a kitchen that was mine.
“I need to tell you something,” I said.
“You’re pregnant.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. Put it back. “How did you know?”
