A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow - Laura Taylor Namey Page 0,92
spoon.
“Qué rico,” I tell her.
She starts pouring the filling into individual molds. “So, for the show, will you do tres leches or the flan?”
“Both if there’s time.”
I wander more, peering into the deck ovens, winding through the storage bay. I finally land in Papi’s office and stop short in the doorway. “What’s going on?”
My family perches on the small sofa, a trio of love. Papi, with his work-weary eyes and dark hair sprinkled with salt, and Mami still wearing her apron. Pilar’s in the middle, binding everyone together like glue.
Mami lifts her face from her laptop. “Why did you not tell us, Lilita?”
“What?” My mind reels. I sink into Papi’s desk chair.
Their faces drop and Pilar’s fingers fidget in endless combinations.
“Catalina sent the pictures she took at your birthday party. The prom they did for you,” Mami says. “Qué linda.”
“It was.” Those pictures are in my e-mail box too. I haven’t been able to open the file. Not yet. Orion’s flowers rest on my dresser, drying out.
Pilar says, “We were waiting for you to say something. Nothing yesterday off the plane, but you were so tired.” Her hand dashes aimlessly. “And nothing today, this morning over breakfast.”
My palms turn clammy and my heartbeat thrums in my chest, and not from two cafecitos.
Papi turns the laptop, scrolling. Cate snapped my party but captured my truth. Pictures show Orion dancing with me, his eyes closed and his lips poised at the top of my head. My face rests against his lapel, dream-spent. Then me, snuggled into his side as Jules sings my song, and dozens more of me and my new friends.
Words fail. I’m stripped of more than my apron today, naked and bare. I have to cross my arms at my chest to keep my traitorous emotions from flooding this place we all built. The sobs start inward, rolling, but I hide them behind a storm wall, anchoring myself into my father’s seat.
“We know about Le Cordon Bleu,” Papi says. “Catalina had a lot to say about that. About your plans and how much you impacted Winchester. How you love the city and could bring our food there. But you have not had anything to say.”
Say it? Give it actual words, ripping this little square office right down the middle?
Pilar scoots forward. “Don’t let it be like before. Don’t hold it all in.”
The wall cracks. “Yes, okay? Fine.” I’m flooding now, standing, ripping into myself. “It’s true. England, the school, Orion—all of it. But Miami is my home and everything here is my home. My future. How can I just… leave? Just forget everything we are, everything we’ve been working for?”
“Lila, answer the simple things,” Papi says. “Your sister told us about your Orion. Does this boy love you too?”
I close my eyes as inner snapshots flip. Orion Maxwell has never said the words, but he’s also shouted them a million ways, a million times. “He does.”
Mami slides her arm around Pilar. They cling to each other, faces wrestling with emotions until jagged smiles win.
“Bueno. And we looked at the pastry program. It’s wonderful. Do you want to go to this school?”
“The tuition is so expensive. And so are the train passes, and I couldn’t work for a long time on a student visa.”
“Abuela’s inheritance for you is enough.”
How can I even think of this? Using the money Abuela earned at La Paloma for a future opposite of the one she prepared me for? “I want to make the right choice. The best one for our family. For our business and everyone.”
“What happened to the best choice for you?” Papi asks.
For me. My legacy. My heart. My future.
But a piercing truth slashes like Tío’s knife into corn stalks. I turn to my mother. “You didn’t send me to England so I would choose it over our family, over Miami and La Paloma.” Not the woman who lost her best friend to the same country. “If you’d known, you wouldn’t have put me on that plane. But you did and now look!”
Mami stands and reaches for me, her hands twined with mine and her eyes like arrow points. “Did your heart find peace and some closure and something new to smile about in England?”
“Sí, Mami,” I whisper. “So, so much.”
Now she cries, a fat tear rolling down her cheek and the smell of her like honeysuckle. “That is exactly why we sent you.”
* * *
Stuffed with pork and Cuban side dishes, topped with an extended family’s worth of kisses and dancing and