Page 5 of Devotion
“That bad?” I asked.
“His family hired a third attorney, because apparently two wasn’t enough to make my life miserable. They needed a whole legal squad.” Vicky exhaled, and I heard the sound of her dropping onto something, probably her couch, the one with the broken spring she kept saying she’d fix. “His lawyer actually argued in front of the judge that I don’t provide a ‘structured enough environment’ for Eloise. Structured. Like I’m running a prison instead of raising a five-year-old.”
“What does ‘structured’ even mean?” I asked.
“It means his family has money and mine doesn’t. That’s what it means.”
I pressed the dough harder than necessary. My sister’s ex-husband, Greg, could charm any room he walked into and make you believe his smile was genuine. Right up until you lived with him and realized the charm was a costume he took off the second the front door closed.
He hadn’t been violent, fortunately. He’d been something quieter, and in some ways worse: controlling, dismissive, capable of making you feel crazy for having feelings and then telling everyone you were unstable when you finally snapped.
Vicky filed for divorce eleven months ago, and Greg’s wealthy family had responded by turning the custody battle into a war meant to wear her down, slowly bleeding her dry while she tried to keep a roof over her daughter’s head.
A small, bright voice piped up in the background. “Mommy, is that Auntie Miley?”
Eloise’s voice made my heart ache. That little girl was only five years old, obsessed with princess stickers and the color yellow. Sometimes she asked questions none of us knew how to answer—like why Daddy lived in a different house now.
“Tell her I’m making her a cake,” I said loudly enough for Eloise to hear.
Vicky put me on speaker. Eloise’s voice filled the kitchen. “Does it have sprinkles?”
“All the sprinkles. Every sprinkle that exists.”
“Even the rainbow ones?” She giggled softly.
“Especially the rainbow ones.”
“Okay, good.” She was quiet for a second. “Auntie Miley, can I also have a puppy?”
“That’s a Mommy question, baby.”
“Mommy said ask Auntie Miley!”
Vicky got back on the line, voice lower now. Eloise had wandered off to her room, probably to negotiate a puppy deal with her stuffed animals. “Sorry. She’s been on a puppycampaign for three weeks. She made a presentation. With drawings.”
I couldn't help laughing. “She’s five.”
“She’s persuasive. I blame you.”
I smiled, but it didn’t hold. Vicky’s voice had changed. The humor was still there, surface-level, because Vicky and I had both learned young that if you didn’t laugh, you drowned. But underneath it was the sound of a woman standing on the last floor of a building that was burning from the bottom up.
“Vic,” I said, gentler now. “How bad is it really?”
She went silent. Longer than I liked.
“The restaurant investment is the only income I can point to in court. If Sazón doesn’t work…” She trailed off. She didn’t need to finish. I heard the rest in the silence. If Sazón didn’t work, Greg’s lawyers would use her financial instability as a weapon. The restaurant wasn’t just my dream. It was Vicky’s lifeline. It was the only thing standing between my sister and losing her daughter.
“Sazón is going to work,” I said. “It’s already working.”
“I know. I know it is.” She cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Really. I just need to get through the next hearing without his mother looking at me like I’m something she found on the bottom of her shoe.”
“If she looks at you like that again, I’ll put hot sauce in her tea.”
Vicky laughed. “Torres sisters never sink, right?”
“Yes, Torres sisters never sink.” I repeated it the way we always did, the way we’d been saying it to each other since we were kids sharing a room in Aunt Eliza’s house, whispering it like a prayer on the nights when Eliza’s coldness felt like it might swallow us whole. “We float. Even when the water’s ugly.”
“Even when the water’s ugly,” Vicky echoed. “Okay. I gotta go. Eloise wants to FaceTime Aunt Eliza, and I need to supervisebecause last time Eliza told her that I was getting a ‘divorce’. Then Eloise asked me what ‘divorce’ meant and I had to explain it without using any of the words I actually wanted to use.”
