Chapter 8
Miley
Eloise was wearing a crown made of construction paper and glitter when I walked through Vicky’s front door.
She’d made it herself. I could tell because it was lopsided, covered in yellow marker, and had a sticker of a unicorn on the front that was peeling at the edges.
She looked up from the living room floor where she was hosting a tea party for three stuffed animals and a plastic dinosaur, and her whole face lit up.
“AUNTIE MILEY!”
She launched herself at me with everything she had—arms out, full-tilt, no hesitation.
I caught her, swung her up, and buried my face in her hair, which smelled like strawberry shampoo and the particular sweetness that only children carry.
The sweetness always made my chest ache because she didn't know yet how hard the world was going to try to take it from her.
“Did you bring cake?” she asked, pulling back to study my face like a tiny detective on the case.
“I brought something better.”
“Better than cake?”
“Empanadas.”
Her eyes went wide. “The ones with the cheese?”
“The ones with the cheese.”
She wriggled out of my arms and ran to the kitchen, and I followed her into Vicky’s apartment, which was small, clean, and held together by willpower.
It was the organizational skill that only single mothers could develop.
Every surface served a purpose. The couch had throw pillows that hid the broken spring.
The fridge had Eloise’s drawings held up by magnets shaped like fruit.
The dining table doubled as a homework station, a bill-paying desk, and based on the crayon marks, a princess art studio.
Vicky was in the kitchen. She looked bone-deep tired, the eleven months of grief sitting on her shoulders. But she smiled when she saw me, and the smile was real. She hugged me the way she always did, tight and with her chin on my shoulder.
“You look better,” she said.
“You look like you need to sit down.”
“I’ve been sitting. Eloise had me playing tea party for two hours. I was the guest of honor. She made me wear a tiara.”
“As you should. You’re a queen.”
“I’m a queen who needs a nap and a lawyer who doesn’t charge by the breath.”
We unpacked the empanadas while Eloise set the table like it was a state dinner.
She arranged the plates, then rearranged them, then added a napkin folded into something that was either a swan or a triangle.
It was hard to tell. She put the plastic dinosaur in the center as a centerpiece and declared it ready.
We ate. Eloise talked about school and her best friend Mia.
How she’d learned to write the letter Q, which was the hardest letter because it had a tail and she didn’t understand why letters needed tails.
I listened, asked questions, and watched my niece eat cheese empanadas with pure, uncomplicated joy—her biggest problem was the letter Q—and something in me loosened.
Then Eloise went quiet.
She put her empanada down and looked at her plate. Her little fingers pressed into the edge of the table.
“Auntie Miley?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course, baby.”
“Daddy said Mommy is bad.” Her voice was small. “He said she won’t let me see him. But that’s not true. Mommy always lets me see Daddy. She packs my bag and everything.”
The kitchen went still. I looked at Vicky. My sister’s face had gone white. She put her fork down, slid off her chair, and knelt beside Eloise, pulling her daughter into her arms. Eloise went willingly, tucking her face into Vicky’s neck the way she always did when the world was confusing.
“Baby, listen to me.” Vicky’s voice was steady. I don’t know how. I was across the table and my hands were shaking. “Mommy would never keep you from Daddy. You know that, right? You can always see Daddy. Mommy makes sure of it.”
“Then why did he say that?”
“Sometimes grown-ups say things when they’re upset that aren’t true.
It doesn’t mean Daddy is bad. It doesn’t mean Mommy is bad.
It just means sometimes grown-ups make mistakes with their words.
” She pulled back and held Eloise’s face in her hands and looked at her with so much love it was almost hard to watch.
“You are the most important person in the whole world. Okay? To Mommy and to Daddy.”
Eloise nodded. Her eyes were still too big and too worried for a five-year-old but the storm passed quickly, carried away by a child’s faith that the grown-ups will fix everything.
She asked if she could have another empanada.
Vicky said yes. Eloise grabbed one and wandered back to the living room to resume her tea party, crown slightly more lopsided now.
Vicky watched her go. Then she stood, walked into the kitchen, and closed the door behind her.
I found her leaning against the counter with both hands braced on the edge, her head down, her shoulders shaking. No sound.
I put my arms around her from behind and held on. She didn’t turn around. She just stood there, gripping the counter, letting me hold her while her body did the thing it needed to do.
“He’s poisoning her,” Vicky whispered. “He’s telling a five-year-old that her mother is keeping her away. She’s going to grow up thinking I’m the villain.”
“She’s not going to think that.”
“You don’t know that. His family has money, lawyers, and they’re in her ear every other weekend.
I can’t compete with that, Miley. I can’t afford a lawyer who fights back.
I can barely afford groceries this week.
” Her voice broke on the word groceries and I felt it in my chest like a crack running through concrete.
“I worked for his family for six years. I gave them everything. And they fired me the week I filed. No severance, no reference, nothing. Like I was nobody.”
“You are not nobody.”
“I feel like nobody.”
“Vic, look at me.” I turned her around. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were swollen, but she was still the strongest person I knew.
“You left a man who cheated on you and treated you like garbage. You packed your bags and walked out with a five-year-old and no safety net. That is not nobody. That is someone with more guts than Greg and his entire family combined.”
She wiped her face with her sleeve. “You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Make me feel like I can survive things.”
“That’s because you can. Torres sisters never—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Torres sisters never sink,” I said it anyway.
She almost laughed. It was wet, broken, and the most beautiful sound I’d heard all day.
When she pulled back, I told her. The job—Christopher Vale’s grandmother needed a chef, the pay was good, and the position included housing.
I would be working and earning while Sazón was being rebuilt, and every cent I didn’t spend on rent was a cent I could send to Vicky for legal fees, for groceries, for Eloise’s school, for whatever she needed.
“I’ll take care of things,” I said, smiling. “You focus on the case. You focus on Eloise. Let me worry about the money for a while.”
Vicky looked at me. Her eyes were red and her nose was running, but she was still the most stubborn, beautiful, brave woman I knew.
“Torres sisters never sink,” she said.
“Even when the water’s ugly.”
Something close to a smile reached her eyes. “Even when the water’s ugly.”
That evening, Eloise fell asleep in Vicky’s lap during a movie. After Vicky carried her to bed, I sat on the couch with a cup of tea and the TV on low. I wasn’t really watching until the entertainment segment came on and a familiar face filled the screen.
Christopher Vale.
The anchor was reporting that Christopher had officially stepped down from the Ethereal Vanguard, the period drama he’d been attached to for months.
It was confirmed that he was transitioning fully into the role of interim CEO at Vale Industries.
The segment included clips of him entering the Vale Industries building in a suit, looking nothing like the man who’d been swimming in a pool in shorts a few days ago.
Or the man I’d driven home from the lounge.
I set my tea down and leaned forward.
The anchor played a brief clip of a statement Christopher had released, professional and composed. He talked about family responsibility and honoring his father’s legacy, and every word sounded right and none of it sounded like him. It didn’t carry the conviction his acting usually did.
The Ethereal Vanguard was the project he’d talked about with excitement in interview after interview.
He’d given it up.
Was he really okay?
Vicky came back from putting Eloise down and saw the screen and said, “Isn’t that the guy who almost died in your restaurant?”
“That’s the guy who gave me a job.”
She looked at me. Then at the TV. Then back at me. “You’re working for Christopher Vale?”
“For his grandmother. It’s a cooking job, Vic.”
“It’s a cooking job for the family of the most famous actor in the country who you’ve had a poster of since you were sixteen.”
“I did not have a poster.”
“You had a poster. It was on the inside of your closet door so Aunt Eliza wouldn’t see it.”
I took a very long sip of tea. “That poster was for research purposes.”
Vicky laughed. “Torres sisters never sink,” she said, wiping her eyes. “But this one is about to drown in something. How did you make it happen?”
“Shut up.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Shut up and drink your tea.” I said, my lips twitching, holding back a smile.
The weekend passed. I packed. I called the contractor about Sazón and got an update that was cautiously optimistic.
I called Anna, told her about the job, and she said “This is either the best thing that’s ever happened to you or the beginning of a very expensive disaster” and I replied “Those sound like the same thing” and she laughed and whispered, “Exactly.”
Monday morning, I loaded my bag into the car.
Christopher had sent me a short message with the address the night before.
CHRISTOPHER
Someone will meet you at the gate.
I’d texted back a thumbs up and then immediately regretted the thumbs up, because who sends a thumbs up to Christopher Vale, and then I’d typed out three different replies that were all worse and deleted them and kept the thumbs up because at that point the damage was done.
The drive took me through neighborhoods I’d never been to. Streets got wider, lawns got greener. The houses got bigger until they weren’t houses anymore, they were estates, set back behind walls and gates and hedges that said you can’t afford to look at this in the language of landscaping.
The address led to a gated property that made me gulp. I rang the intercom. The gate opened. I walked up a stone path through gardens that were manicured to a standard that required a staff, not a single gardener, and tried to imagine the grandmother who lived here.
I’d been building her in my head all weekend.
Stern, probably. Rich, obviously. A woman who wore her wealth like armor, expected perfection from the help, and called the chef by her last name.
I imagined pearls, the faint smell of expensive powder, and a voice that could freeze water at fifty paces.
I imagined wrong.
The front door was already open when I reached it. And standing in the doorway, silver-haired, pearl-earringed, and smiling at me with an expression that was half surprise and half delight, was Eleanor.
The woman from the legal aid event who helped Vicky and me fight Aunt Eliza for the trust fund. I stared at her, equally stunned.
“Ma’am?” I managed. What do you say when you find out the woman who attended your community cooking classes and tried to set you up with her grandson is your new boss?
That grandson was Christopher Vale.
“Now, dear. Don’t be polite now.”
I stood on the stone path with my bag in my hand and my brain performing an emergency reboot. Every phone call. Every cooking class. Every time she’d said “You’d love him” and I’d laughed and changed the subject. She was talking about Christopher. She was always talking about Christopher.
“Miley?” Eleanor said, then she laughed. “Well. Isn’t this something?”
“Eleanor.” My voice came out faint. “You’re… he’s… your grandson is…”
“Christopher. Yes.” She was still smiling. “I was wondering when you two would finally meet properly. Though I’ll admit, I imagined it would involve less kiwi and more of a proper introduction.”
“You know about that?”
“That my grandson nearly died in your restaurant? Sweetheart, the whole country knew. But I didn’t know it was your restaurant until I saw the interview.” Her eyes went soft. “You defended him beautifully, by the way.”
Heat rose in my cheeks. “I told the truth.”
“I know. That’s what made it beautiful.”
She opened her arms. I walked into them because Eleanor’s hugs were the kind that made you feel like everything might actually be okay, and right now I needed that more than oxygen.
She held me the way she’d held me the first time we met, at the legal aid event, when I was a twenty-four-year-old trying not to cry in front of strangers because my aunt was trying to steal my parents’ money.
Eleanor had pulled me aside, handed me a tissue, and said “Tell me everything.” I had, and she’d fixed it.
She pulled back, held me at arm’s length, and studied my face—same as ever, warm and missing nothing.
“Look at you,” she said. “My beautiful girl. Come inside. We have a lot to talk about.”
I followed her through the door, and behind me, the gate closed, and I had the distinct feeling that I had just walked into a story that was much bigger than a cooking job.