Chapter 19 - Gabriel
The collar sits heavy in my palm, Sunday morning light streaming through the window making the white fabric glow.
My body knows it’s almost time for mass.
Internal clock set to liturgical time after three years.
In two hours, Mrs. Alvarez will be settling into the third pew.
The sanctuary lamp will be burning. Someone will ring the bells.
I won't be there.
The thought brings a strange lightness.
I dial Tomás before I can think too hard about it.
"Gabriel." His voice carries a Sunday morning quality. Already caffeinated, already prepared. "Everything all right?"
"I need you to cover mass." The words come out steady. "I'm in Miami. At La Sirena."
Silence. Not surprised silence. The kind where someone is choosing words carefully.
Tomás is between churches at the moment. His last parish closed six months ago—too small, too rural, not enough parishioners to justify the expense—and the diocese hasn't reassigned him yet. He's been helping out where needed, filling in gaps.
"I wouldn't ask if I had another option," I say, staring at the collar in my hand.
"I know." Another pause. "Just for today?"
"I don't know."
"All right." No judgment, no questions about why. Just logistics, which is why I called him instead of anyone else. "I'll handle it. Tell them you had a family emergency."
"Tomás…"
"The parish will survive without Father Gabriel," he says gently. "The question is whether Gabriel will survive without the parish."
The words land harder than he probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard. Tomás has always seen through my performance.
"I'm all right," I tell him, and for once it might be true.
"Good." A pause. "God doesn't live in a building, Gabriel. Never has."
After we hang up, I look at the collar again. Three years of daily wear has softened the fabric, worn it smooth in places. This thing that defined my entire existence.
I open the nightstand drawer. Place the collar inside. Close it.
The click echoes in the quiet room.
Adrian finds me in the kitchen an hour later, where I’m trying to make coffee with Sera's beans and failing spectacularly. He takes one look at the grounds scattered across the counter and laughs. Not cruel, just delighted.
"A lifetime of instant coffee, and now you're trying to be fancy?" he teases.
"She makes it look easy."
"She makes everything look easy." He commandeers the grinder, movements smooth. "Speaking of which, you know what tonight is?"
"Sunday."
"Sunday ritual." He gets the proportions right on the first try, because of course he does. "Club closes early, eleven. Then we eat. All of us. Together."
"Staff meeting?"
"Family dinner." The distinction matters in how he says it. "Started after you left. Saturday's the big show, Sunday we close early and just exist. No performing. No roles. Just us."
The irony isn't lost on me. Sunday. The day I usually stand at an altar breaking bread, the same day this motley collection of club workers gathers around a different table.
"Sera's been asking about the kitchen," Adrian continues, pouring water steadily. "I told her about family dinner, and her face lit up. She immediately started planning a menu."
Of course she has. Give Sera a kitchen and a group to feed and she builds a home.
By the time I finish the coffee Adrian made, the sun has climbed high enough to turn the Miami streets into shimmering mirages.
By evening, the kitchen at La Sirena is alive, every burner blazing, steam fogging the windows until the outside world disappears.
Sera has claimed this space completely. Pots bubbling, onions hitting hot oil with a violent hiss, the wooden spoon cutting through the chaos like a conductor's baton.
Garlic perfumes the air, then cumin, then something green and bright that makes my eyes water.
"Stop hovering," she says without turning around. "You're making me nervous."
"I'm trying to help."
"Then wash your hands and grab that knife." She points to a cutting board loaded with onions. "Small dice. And Gabriel? Try not to massacre them."
I position myself at the counter, knife awkward in my grip. She watches my first few chops and sighs. The sound of a woman accepting limitations.
"Smaller. Like you're making confetti, not chopping lumber. And keep your fingers curled. I don't want blood in my sofrito."
The onions fight back immediately. Tears stream down my face as I hack through layers that slip and slide.
Adrian wanders through, steals a taste from one of the pots, gets his hand slapped with the wooden spoon.
The casual violence of it, the laughter that follows, fills the kitchen with something I haven't felt since my mother cooked.
"How many are we feeding?" I ask, wiping my eyes with my sleeve, probably making it worse.
"Depends who shows." Sera adjusts flame, tastes, adjusts again. "Adrian says usually six or seven. Core."
The word sits different here than it did in Homestead. There, I was Father. Separate, above, apart. Here, I'm just Gabriel trying not to destroy vegetables while my girlfriend creates miracles from nothing.
Girlfriend. The word sits wrong and right at the same time.
The afternoon crawls by in aromatic waves.
I watch Sera work, the competence of it, the way she owns this space she's been in for less than twenty-four hours.
Logan passes through, says nothing, but I catch him inhaling deeply.
Even Gunner appears in the doorway, drawn by the smell. Then Adrian, again.
And then Isa Navarro.
She doesn't walk in so much as materialize.
Suddenly there, leaning against the doorframe like she's assessing a threat.
Tall and lean, Isa has the kind of precision to her movements that makes everyone else seem sloppy by comparison.
Her black hair is pulled back so tight it looks painful, revealing sharp cheekbones and eyes that could cut glass.
Nothing soft about her—not the severe lines of her face, not the rigid posture, not the way her gaze sweeps the kitchen, calculating, measuring, those sharp eyes landing on Sera with weight I can feel across the room.
The examination begins at Sera's hands. Watching how she holds the knife, the economy of her movements, the way she doesn't measure spices but adds them by instinct.
Then up to her shoulders, noting the tension there, the way she's aware of being watched but doesn't turn.
Finally settling on the wooden spoon, old and dark with use, clearly not from La Sirena's kitchen.
Sera feels it too. I see her shoulders tighten slightly, but she doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge the scrutiny. Just keeps cooking.
"You're the new one." Isa's voice carries a flatness that could mean anything.
"I'm Sera."
"I know who you are."
The silence that follows vibrates with unspoken evaluation. I want to step between them, deflect Isa's intensity. But Sera doesn't need protection. She sets down the spoon, turns, meets Isa's gaze straight on.
Sera looks up from the stove. "Want to taste?"
"No." Flat, final.
Adrian sighs. "Isa."
"What? I'm here. I showed up." She shifts her weight, the movement subtle but deliberate. Everything about her seems deliberate. "That's the requirement."
"The requirement is family dinner," he says. "Emphasis on family."
Something flickers across her face—gone so fast I can't name it.
Another beat of silence, then Isa turns on her heel and leaves without another word. Adrian shrugs dramatically and follows after her.
"I can see why you said she's hard to read," Sera observes once she's gone.
"That was actually positive, for Isa." I abandon the onions, wrap my arms around her from behind. "Give her time."
"How much time?"
"How long is a piece of string?"
Sera laughs, but there's something underneath. Not hurt exactly, but the awareness of being measured and possibly found wanting. I recognize it. Isa does that to people, holds up a mirror that shows every flaw.
"She'll come around," I promise.
"And if she doesn't?"
"Then she doesn't eat your food. Her loss."
Eleven o'clock arrives with the sound of locks turning, staff filtering out, the public La Sirena going dark. The private one emerges like another creature entirely. Quieter, warmer, real.
The table Adrian's set up in the private dining area could tell stories. Long, scarred wood, mismatched chairs that somehow work together. Candles because Adrian insists, wine because Logan insists, plates that don't match because no one cares.
Gunner arrives first and claims the largest chair at the end of the table, though it still barely contains his frame.
A beer already waits at his place, condensation beading on the glass.
When Sera sets a steaming plate in front of him, his eyes move deliberately from the food to her face, and he gives a single, measured nod.
Coming from anyone else, the gesture might seem dismissive, but from Gunner, it's nothing short of a standing ovation.
Logan appears precisely when he said he would, at ten past the hour, carrying wine that he selected from his personal collection. He's traded his usual armor for a sweater and trousers. Still Logan, but softer somehow. He pours with the same care he brings to everything.
Adrian's everywhere at once. Adjusting music, lighting more candles, filling glasses. He takes the seat next to me, across from where Isa will inevitably sit. I clock the sightline, file it away with all the other Adrian-and-Isa moments I've been collecting.
Isa enters and the temperature shifts. Not colder. Sharper. She claims her usual chair, eyes landing on Sera again with that cold weight.
And then someone new. The Siren.
The soft click of heels on hardwood announces her before she appears. Then she's there, and the air itself seems to shimmer. Not from her beauty, though she's striking, but from something more elemental. Joy, maybe. Or the magnetism of someone who's learned to transform pain into art.