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Chapter Text

Eulalia does one of those 10 Quick Questions With… things for the Tribune , it’s five minutes on the phone with some guy who pronounces her name wrong for the entirety of their conversation. One of the things he asks her is for her earliest memory. 

“Being in the kitchen with my parents,” she says, “I don’t remember what they were making but I remember my dad picking me up and letting me whisk this sauce and just feeling, like, really happy and safe. And like I was kind of witnessing something magical happening. I still feel like that when I’m cooking with them, which is why we’re opening a restaurant together, I guess.”

Things he also asks her: what’s your most embarrassing moment? Her answer to that is knocking Angel Reese’s drink over her while serving at Ife,  although actually that was kind of fine and she was nice about it. The actual most embarrassing moment of her life was when she was twelve and her dad ruffled her hair in front of Sean Spellissy, the dreamboat of eighth grade. The readers of the Tribune probably don’t want to hear about that. What did you want to be when you were growing up? A chef, obviously. What is your guiltiest pleasure? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. What is your most unappealing habit? Biting her nails. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Impatience. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Impatience, again. He asks her: how often do you have sex? To which she replies, none of your business, and tries not to think about the fact no one’s touched her like that since she left Barcelona. And finally he asks her: which living person do you admire the most? That’s easy. It’s her mother. 

When her phone rings, she’s in the office filling out some stuff for the insurance company. It’s a private number but she figures it might be some contractor or a vendor. She answers it cheerily.

“Hello!”

“Uh, hi, is that Eulalia Berzatto?” The voice on the other end of the line is craggy and kind of trembling, full of nerves in a way that sets her on edge.

“Speaking,” she says.

“I read about you in the Trib,” the guy says. “You opening a restaurant?” 

“Uh-huh,” she says, thinking please don’t be a stalker, please don’t be a stalker. “We open June 27th! We’re fully booked though, so…”

“Right, yeah. It’s not - uh, is your mom Sydney Adamu?” 

Eulalia’s heart thumps hard in her chest. “May I ask who is calling?” she says, in her most professional voice. The guy laughs. 

“Oh, shit, yeah, sorry - uh, I don’t want to freak you out but my name’s Danny Allen. I think I’m your biological father.”

Eulalia once fell off the roof of the restaurant, when she was ten and an idiot. She fractured her arm but was otherwise fine. The thing she remembers most about the entire incident isn’t the ride in the ambulance or her mom chewing her out for doing something so stupid, but the feeling of falling. Air thick like liquid, moving through it, knowing you’re going to hit the ground and there’s nothing you can do about it. When Danny Allen calls her, it kind of feels the same.

Chapter Text

When she’s sixteen, Eulalia’s parents sit her and her sisters down at the kitchen table and tell them they’re going to have another baby. This embarrasses Eulalia, for several reasons. Firstly, it means her parents are having sex. Sydney makes it no secret that the new baby is an accident. And it prods a bruise that most days, Eulalia doesn’t even think about. She’s the only one that’s not Carmen’s biological child, the only one born when Sydney was twenty-four, and living with her dad, and broke. Eulalia’s Sheridan Road in the shape of a human girl. Most of the time, in the chaos of the everyday, of school and her sisters and washing dishes at her mother’s restaurant, it never even crosses her mind. But sometimes… sometimes it’s a weight on her chest. She’s taller than her dad. To his credit, Carmen has never treated her any differently. She has his name, and an amended birth certificate stating that he is her father. She can’t even remember a time when he wasn’t. He mutters love you, honey into her hair when he kisses her goodnight, the same way he does Emmy and Beatrice. But she’s taller than him. 

The new baby is a boy, and they name him for Carmen. This does nothing to quash the growing alienation Eulalia feels. When she watches her parents coo over him, her stomach twists with acid. They never did that with her. When she was as small and as wrinkled and as brand-new as Baby Carmy, her father didn’t even know she existed. Her mother is always talking about how hard that first year was, how much Eulalia cried. It was a miracle she ever had any more, she’d tell people. If it wasn’t for Carmen, she wouldn’t have. Sometimes Eulalia will pass the nursery and she’ll spot her father sitting in the rocking chair with the baby on his chest, and she’ll feel all knotted-up inside, her eyes stinging and her chest tight. Her sisters - her sisters who were wanted and planned for and dreamed of, born for the stars their parents received - love the baby. They spend hours just watching him, they sing to him and carry him around like he’s a living doll. Eulalia doesn’t even like looking at him. Because she’s the oldest and the busiest, it is easy to avoid him. She’s got basketball practice, she’s going to a party with her cousins, she’s working at the restaurant, she’s got a paper on the causes of the Vietnam war due tomorrow. And then, one Friday, her mother calls her out on it. 

“Do you, like, hate the baby or something?” Sydney asks. They’re locking up Ife, doing the final checks. Eulalia’s got her arms full of dirty laundry, aprons and rags and mop-heads, that they’re going to take home and wash. 

“Or are you not a baby person?” Sydney continues, “It’s okay if you’re not. I’m not a baby person, really. I like ‘em when they’re a little older, when you can talk to ‘em about stuff.”

Eulalia’s not sure what to say. Unless she invents time travel, there’s nothing Sydney can do about it. It’s not anyone’s fault. Eulalia’s got a hole in her heart and she’s going to have to learn to live with it. 

“I don’t hate the baby,” she says, “I’m just busy. I don’t know.” 

“Okay,” Sydney says, “but like, you barely even look at him. And it’s not - I’m not asking you to - you feel kind of far away, sometimes.”

She looks at Eulalia with big, beseeching eyes. Eulalia watches her mother run the pass three times a week, and hovers at her elbow when politicians and athletes and Grammy winners give their compliments to the chef. She doesn’t think of her as a person who gets lost easily. But she looks a little lost now. 

“I’m just busy, Mom,” Eulalia says, “I’m fine.” 

“Okay,” Sydney says, “could you text your dad and tell him we’re ready?”

Eulalia balances the laundry bag on her hip and digs her phone out of her pocket. Sydney switches the lights off, checks the walk-in one last time. Eulalia texts her father, who responds almost instantly. 

“He’s on his way,” she says. 

“Thanks, baby,” says Sydney. They wander out of the kitchen together, into the cool night air, the back alley where all the line cooks and the wait staff smoke. Sydney locks the door and in the distance, someone somewhere smashes something. 

“I want you to be able to tell me anything,” Sydney says to Eulalia in a quiet voice. “Even if it’s hard or you think you sound like a crazy person. Especially if it’s hard or you think you sound like a crazy person.”

It’s not the baby’s fault. He didn’t ask to be born. Neither did Eulalia. Sydney looks up at her, right in her eyes. Eulalia’s nearly a head taller than her. 

“I was your mom first,” Sydney says. “I don’t know this new kid very well yet.” 

“That’s kind of the problem,” Eulalia says, and she’s shocked at herself, she can’t believe the words coming out of her mouth. “I’m... I feel like the first attempt at a soufflé.” 

A deep crease of concern appears between Sydney’s eyebrows. “Oh, honey,” she says, “I wish my first soufflé came out like you.”

Eulalia laughs a little, a damp, pathetic sniffle. 

“He’s yours and Dad’s,” Eulalia says, “and I’m not.” 

“Oh my God, Eulalia,” Sydney says, “are you serious?”

She nods, tries to blink away her tears. Sydney’s face begins to crumple. 

“I’m sorry,” Eulalia sniffles, “I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

“Baby,” Sydney says, and there’s a firmness in her voice Eulalia recognises from her nights on the line, “there’s nothing you can’t say to us. You understand?”

Eulalia’s hands are trembling and she worries she’s going to drop the laundry. Her vision’s blurry with tears. The alley is illuminated by headlights for a second, and Sydney glows gold before her daughter. 

“I understand,” Eulalia says. 

“You’re ours,” says Sydney, “you’re, like, the most ours. You’re not a soufflé. You’re - God, you’re cola braised short ribs and raspberry risotto, baby.”

Eulalia laughs wetly. The short ribs and risotto is her favorite of all her mother’s food. It had been on the menu at The Bear when she was little, but Sydney hadn’t carried it over to Ife. It belongs to their family now, she says. And it does, at birthday dinners and celebratory meals when Eulalia’s basketball team wins, when Emmy finishes a sewing project, when Bea aces a test. It was served at the Annunciation of Baby Carmy. 

“What do you mean?” Eulalia asks.

“Because,” Sydney shrugs, “I started it by myself. And it would’ve been fine, I think. Good, even. But it wasn’t perfect. And then, y’know, Carmy added acid to it.”

Eulalia is silent on the journey to Hyde Park. She fiddles around with her phone and listens to her mother fill Carmen in on how service went. Sydney does an impression of one of the servers dropping a plate of guinea fowl that makes him laugh so hard he nearly runs a red light. When Eulalia looks up, her parents are holding hands in the space between the front seats, their fingers laced together. 

They get home and relieve Pop from his post on the couch, where he’s been watching Inside the NBA and tutting at everything Kentavious Caldwell-Pope says. Carmen goes to check on the baby and Sydney loads the washing machine with the laundry from Ife. Eulalia hovers in the doorway of her brother’s nursery and watches Carmen watch the baby. Her dad clocks her, gestures for her to come in. 

“Good day?” Carmen asks, putting his arm around her shoulder and squeezing. Eulalia shrugs. Baby Carmy is asleep, his eyes fluttering under his eyelids, little hands clenched into fists. He’s so tiny it scares her. The longer she looks at him, the more she sees their father in his face, the slope of his nose, the shape of his ears. She’ll never look in the mirror and see the same. Her eyes, which haven’t really dried from before, well up and she dashes a hand against her cheek to stop the tears. 

“Hey,” Carmen says, “what’s up?” 

“Oh, it’s,” she sniffs, “it’s not anything…um, I’m just, like, tired.” 

“Eulalia,” Carmen says, her name a full sentence. 

“Um, it’s just, Mom and I had kind of an intense conversation earlier,” she says, “and, like, I don’t know.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“Not really,” she says, “I guess Mom’ll tell you.” 

“Maybe,” he says, “but I’d like to hear it from you.” 

He gives her shoulders another squeeze and lets her go. The baby makes a noise, but doesn’t wake. 

“Is he dreaming?” Eulalia asks. 

“Uh-huh,” Carmen says, “I don’t know what about though. Probably milk.”

Eulalia laughs wetly. “Yeah, probably.” 

Carmen leans down, presses a kiss to the baby’s head. And then he stands up, puts a hand on the back of his daughter’s head, and kisses her temple. She can’t bear it. A little sob bursts out from her. 

“Hey,” he says, “it’s alright.” 

“It’s not,” she whimpers, and then the baby starts to cry. Eulalia feels like a fucking idiot, stood sobbing by her baby brother’s crib. She presses a hand to her mouth to try and stifle her cries, watches her father scoop the baby up in his arms. He shushes Baby Carmy, rocking him and rubbing the baby’s back. He quiets, and Carmen stretches an arm out towards Eulalia.

“C’mere,” he says, and she goes to him. She buries her snotty, tear-stained face in his shoulder. She wishes she was small enough for him to pick her up, that she could bury her head in his chest the way she used to when she was little. Once, being in her father’s arms was enough to soothe all troubles, all the bad dreams and scraped knees and fights with fair-weather friends. It’s not like that anymore. It never will be again. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispers into him, “I didn’t mean to wake him.” 

“It’s alright,” Carmen says, “you’re okay, you’re both okay.” 

The baby’s asleep again, and Carmen releases Eulalia to put him down. He puts a hand on her shoulder, and wordlessly leads her out of the nursery. The door clicks shut behind them. They hover in the hallway. Eulalia dabs her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. Her dad leans against the wall, and waits for her to speak. 

“I think, um, I think baby Carmy has made me sad,” Eulalia says, “because it really, like, reminds me that you’re not… you know, biologically. And I don’t - like you are my dad but it - I don’t - you weren’t there when I was born.”

“Eulalia,” Carmen says, “you were born in 2020. I wouldn’t have been allowed in the room anyway.”

She splutters, snot and spit. There’s a television murmuring somewhere in the house. Her mom’s watching Masterchef or her sisters have fallen asleep with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on again. 

“C’mon, man,” she says, but she’s smiling. 

“Alright. Sorry,” he says. He sighs and scrubs his jaw with his hand. “Have I done something - have we - I don’t want you - ” 

“I didn’t want to upset you,” she says in a small voice. 

“Upset me?” he says. “You can’t - jeez, okay. Eulalia, it’s like this, right? You gotta listen to me when I say this. I never, ever thought I’d have kids. It was so - it was the furthest fucking thing from my mind. I could barely keep myself alive, let alone anyone else. When I met your mom - when I met your mom, I was in nine kinds of pain. My brother had just died, and I’d been working and pushing and, and, suffering and I was just running on empty. And when I met Sydney, it was like the sun came out. You get it.”

Eulalia nods. She’s heard this story before, both the polished, professional version Carmen uses when he’s writing the foreword to Sydney’s cookbooks, and the private, personal edition he tells at Thanksgiving dinner. She suspects there may be a third version, a version only they know, whispered between them in the quiet of the night. 

“I heard about you before I saw you. And it killed me, ‘cause what business did I have, wanting your mom like I did, when I couldn’t - I didn’t want to inflict myself on you. And then, the day we found the money in the cans, Sydney came in with you in her arms and I looked at you, and you just, you saved me. I know that sounds like bullshit but that’s what it felt like. You know the story from the, uh, the Bible, when the Angel Gabriel visits Mary, y’know, do not be afraid, you will have a son and you shall name him Jesus? And when she tells Joseph he freaks the fuck out, and the angel visits him and is like, listen, this is your job, this is your purpose. This is the reason you were born, this is what you’re supposed to be doing. And that’s - that’s how - you’re mine like Jesus was Joseph’s. You gotta know that. Please tell me you know that.” 

Eulalia’s not really sure what she’s supposed to say. 

“Mom said I’m cola braised short ribs and raspberry risotto,” she says. Carmen laughs.

“Yeah, that sounds like her. She’s right. You are. Listen, you, you got plans tomorrow?” 

She shrugs. Tomorrow’s Saturday so she’ll be working again. She’s got basketball practice in the morning and she should probably try and make a dent in her Calculus homework. 

“School stuff,” she says. 

“Pfft, fuck that - don’t tell Syd I said that,” Carmen says, and Eulalia giggles. “You wanna hang out with me and the baby?”

“Okay,” she chews her bottom lip, “what you doing?” 

“The park, hit up the Art Institute for a little bit, couple of thrift stores, get lunch at your mom’s. You in?”

It sounds nice. It sounds like the kind of Saturday they’d have way back when, before even Emmy was born. 

“Yeah,” she says, “I’d like that.”

The baby really likes art. He’s too small to enjoy the park, really, but he likes art. He looks at it like he’s really seeing it, his big brown eyes widening in wonder. It’s the first thing she’s learned about him, Eulalia realizes as she watches him take in American Gothic. Like, the baby as a person, not a concept. He’s going to have opinions one day - he might even have opinions now, he’s just too little to voice them. He’s in Carmen’s arms, and her dad’s pointing at the painting, explaining it to the baby in a low voice. He used to do that with Eulalia, she remembers. She waits for jealousy to twist her up, but it doesn’t come. Instead, she feels the pull of a thread, fine and golden, between herself and the baby. 

“Can I take him?” Eulalia asks Carmen. “I wanna show him The Child’s Bath.” 

Carmen looks a little surprised but he blinks it off quickly. “Sure, honey,” he says, “you got him?” 

Eulalia’s not really sure what to do with her hands but she copies what she’s seen her parents do - hand on the baby’s back, the other looped under his chubby legs. Carmen deems this acceptable and hangs back, hands in his pockets. Eulalia can feel his eyes on her as she carries the baby through the gallery. It’s like when she was learning to ride a bike as a kid, her dad’s hand hovering over her back as she sped up, ready to catch her if she fell. 

The baby wriggles in her arms and pulls on one of her braids. 

“Sorry, Carm,” Eulalia says, adjusting him so he’s on her hip, “I’m kind of new to this. But then, you’re like, kind of new to being in the world, right? So between us we’ll figure it out.” 

As the months pass, and Eulalia learns more about the baby, she finds, to her surprise, that she loves him. It is food, more than anything else, that solidifies this feeling. She has vague memories of her sisters getting put onto solids, her parents agonizing over what to give them, the bated breath when they tried something new, but this is the first time she’s really been involved in the process. The baby has a sweet tooth. Eulalia emails her uncle Marcus, asking for dessert advice, and receives an annotated first draft of his cookbook for her troubles. She makes Baby Carmy strudels and roulades and a baked Alaska that brings their mother to tears. Food has always been a living thing for Eulalia in a way that it’s not really for other people - she used to call up her parents and beg to be picked up from the homes of her school friends after being served soggy oven-cooked fries for dinner. A bad meal can ruin her day, her week, her month. She’s loved being in the kitchen since she was a little girl. She only plays basketball because the physicality of it, the rhythm of it, reminds her of working on the line. Cooking for the baby, for Emmy and Bea, for her parents and her cousins and her Pop, crystallizes something that she’s kind of always known. It isn’t a question of what she’s going to do after high school, but how.  

Emmanuel gently suggests she look at getting a business degree in-state like her cousin Eva, which she promises to think about and then never does. Her father name-drops twenty different Michelin starred restaurants that owe him a favor but the concept makes her skin itch. 

“Or,” he says over dinner, “you could stay at home, keep working at your mom’s. Girls, you want more broccolini?”

“Yes, please, Daddy,” Eulalia’s sisters chorus, and Carmen dutifully distributes the stalks between his daughters. 

“I think culinary school would be good for you,” Sydney says, feeding the baby ravioli. “It’d broaden your mind, not to mention your palate. But you don’t have to go to the CIA just ‘cause I did. You can go anywhere.”

Eulalia shakes her head. “I want, like, excellence, you know?”

And she wants to cook somewhere she’s going to be called chef and not baby. She doesn’t want to sound ungrateful because she knows her dad only wants to keep her safe but sometimes she thinks he’ll only be happy if they all follow him and Sydney around like ducklings. He takes the baby to work with him, except when he teaches in prisons. Her mom, and the State of Illinois’s safeguarding procedures, put their foot down with that one. 

There’s also this feeling she has when she thinks about the Culinary Institute of America, when she spots Sydney’s diploma, framed in her office. Like, if Eulalia can go there and succeed and thrive, somehow, the rip in the fabric of the universe that was created when she was conceived will heal itself. She’s aware that this sounds insane, which is why she hasn’t expressed it to anyone. But it’s like this: if her mother’s dreams had come true, Eulalia would never have been born. She has to be worth it. Otherwise, what’s the point? 

“You can get that at Ife,” Carmen says, “c’mon, Syd, what she’s going to learn from some psychopath yelling at her and calling her names that she’s not going to learn from working under you?”

Sydney and Eulalia purse their lips, their faces a mirror of each other. The baby spits out a mouthful of spinach and ricotta.

“Gross, little dude,” says Sydney, wiping his chin. “That’s not what culinary school’s like though, Carm. Like, that’s not how you teach - ”

“Yeah, ‘cause I know what the other assholes are like - ”

“I would kill to live in New York,” Emmy says between bites of pasta. “I’m so jealous, ‘lia, I could spit.”

“I think it’d be nice to work with Mom,” says Bea, “like, if I was you.” 

Emmy scoffs. “Kiss-ass.”

“Hey, watch it,” Sydney says. “It’s up to you, Eulalia, it’s your life. You know we’ve got spots though, don’t you? Like, we’re not just saying that, this is a legitimate organization.”

Eulalia nods. “Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve got time to think about it, right?”

“Sure, yeah.”

“I could call Terry,” Carmen says, and Eulalia rolls her eyes. Andrea Terry changed her diapers, for God’s sake. 

“Don’t roll your eyes,” Sydney laughs, “you’re such a teenager, jeez. You know how many people wanna work for Andrea?”

“I’m just tryna help, baby,” Carmen says quietly, and Eulalia’s cheeks burn. She feels bad.

“I know,” she says, stabbing a piece of broccolini with her fork, “I’m sorry, I just - this shit is scary, y’know?”

“How come Eulalia’s allowed to say shit and I’m not?” Emmy asks. 

Sydney snorts. “You just said it!” 

Carmen nudges Eulalia’s shoulder with his own. “I get it,” he says, “I just want - I didn’t have anyone, y’know, when it was me makin’ these decisions. I never want you to feel like that.”

She looks at him and tries to imagine what he was like when he was seventeen. Her aunt Nat has all these stories about how Carmen was a sickly, clingy child, and a monosyllabic teenager who only seemed happy in the kitchen. It makes Eulalia kind of sad. She wishes she had a time machine, so she could go back and give that kid a hug. And maybe introduce him to her mom ahead of schedule. It would erase her from existence, sure, but it might save them both a lot of unnecessary suffering. 

“I know,” she says, “I just - I think it might be good for me to have a little bit of time where I’m like, working somewhere where I’m not Syd-and-Carmy’s-daughter, y’know?”

Carmen considers this, sets his jaw. He looks over at Sydney, who nods, the two of them having one of their silent conversations, speaking a language Eulalia can’t understand. 

“Okay,” Carmen says to Eulalia, “if you want to go to the CIA, then I will do… everything in my power to get you there. And then you can come home and open a spot with me and your mom, alright?”

Sydney leans across and kisses him quickly, soft and sweet. Eulalia laughs. “Sure, Dad. What’ll we call it?”

Chapter Text

Everyone at the Culinary Institute of America knows who Eulalia’s parents are. Some people recognise her from the Ife Instagram without her even opening her mouth, which is actually kind of scary. Every lecturer has a story about working with her dad, or eating at The Bear, or sitting at their table at the James Beard awards. She’s recognised by her first name alone, she doesn’t even get the chance to wrap up the Adamu-Berzatto before they’re telling her about her own parents. It’s frustrating as fuck. How’s she supposed to carve out her own identity as a chef when some guy’s telling her she brunoises the same way her mom does? Every time she answers a question correctly, there’s a sigh and a scoff from her classmates. Of course Eulalia knows. She was practically born with a whisk in her hand. This dude in her Anthropology of Food class starts calling her Brooklyn which confuses her because she’s from Chicago and it pisses her off and when she calls him out on it, he says: “It’s like Brookyln Beckham, right, you’re a premium nepotism baby.”

She FaceTimes her parents and rants until her voice goes hoarse. Her mother is unsympathetic, to say the least. 

“God, Eulalia,” she says, “do you know what I would’ve given to’ve been a fuckin’ nepotism baby?” 

“No one takes me seriously,” Eulalia whines, “I feel like nothing I do is ever good enough because everyone knows I’m only here because you guys got a fucking star.” 

“And retained it too,” says Sydney, “don’t forget about that.” 

“Mom. I’m serious.”

“Who gives a shit what those assholes think?” Carmen says. “You know you’re good. Let the food speak for itself. Fuck ‘em.” 

“Yeah, but we’re not cooking,” she says, “we’re, like, learning how to wash our hands.”

“You’d be surprised how many people don’t know how to do that,” Sydney says with a grimace. Carmen nods gravely. She thinks they might be making fun of her, a little bit. Their faces are pressed close together in the tiny frame of Eulalia’s phone. Homesickness hits her like a wave. 

“I’m sorry for bitching,” she says, “what are you guys up to?” 

“That’s what we’re here for, baby,” Sydney says, “if you can’t bitch to us, who can you bitch to?” 

“I think traditionally, like, friends?”

“Well, you know what they say,” Sydney says, “a daughter is just a little girl who grows up to be your best friend.” She pauses for a beat and then sings: “If you’re out on the road, feelin’ lonely and so cold!”

Eulalia cackles. “Gross, Syd,” says Carmen, but he’s smiling. 

“Nah, I’m just playin’,” says Sydney, “uh, it’s business as usual - Emmy and Bea are mad at each other, you know what that’s about, actually, Carm?”

“Not a clue.”

“Great, we’re killing this whole parenting thing. Um, the baby misses you so much he’s sleeping in your bed - ” 

“Oh, don’t tell me that!” Eulalia wails, “I’m gonna cry!” 

Her mother laughs. “And if you were here, you’d be like, get out of my bed, weirdo!”

“You wanna talk to him?” Carmen asks. “He’s just chilling and watching Bob Ross right now.”

“Please,” Eulalia says, nodding. She wants to hear about how the baby’s days are going, what he’s learning, where he’s gone and what he’s seen. He’s started going to daycare, the same place Eulalia spent her toddlerhood, but he’s shyer than she was. He’s shyer than Emmy, he’s even shyer than Beatrice which is really saying something. She worries about him. Carmen kisses Sydney quickly, like he’s done a thousand times before and will do a thousand times again, and slopes off, calling the baby’s name. 

“No but for real, are you actually like, deeply unhappy?” Sydney says. Eulalia shrugs. She’s wanted this for so long - to live alone, to get the bus into the city on a random Thursday and stumble on the greatest souvlaki she’s ever eaten at this tiny hole in the wall spot, just because she can. It feels wrong to say she’s unhappy. What’s unhappiness, really? She’s frustrated, sure, and she’s kind of lonely, and once or twice, she’s woken up in the night by a weight on her chest and the conviction that she’s ruined her own life, but none of those things equal unhappiness. Do they? 

“It’s fine,” she says, “Dad’s right, it’ll get better once we’re cooking.” 

“Totally,” Sydney says, “and just like, remember to keep breathing and to stir your roux ‘cause that shit is a bitch to clean out from the bottom of a pan.” 

Eulalia laughs. “You speaking from experience?” 

“It literally happened to the new stage yesterday.”

“Oh no!”

“I know! I feel bad, she’s one of Carm’s little projects but she just totally lost her head. Sliced her hand open, set a dishcloth on fire, you name it.”

“Damn,” Eulalia whistles, long and low. She gets it - the pressure of a kitchen, especially one like her mom’s, isn’t for everyone. She’s lucky, she supposes, that her first memories are a chorus of yes chef and the smell of garlic and onion on the air. There’s not a kitchen in the world that wouldn’t feel like home to her. 

“Is she coming back?”

“Yeah, Abuela and I talked to her - oh, here he is!”

Sydney moves her phone, capturing Carmen and Carmen in the frame. The baby is on Carmen’s hip, a dimpled fist scrunched in his shirt, and the other reaching out towards Sydney. He’s grown since Eulalia last saw him, which is crazy because it’s literally been a week since the last time she called home. 

“You wanna say hi to Eulalia, baby?” Sydney says, taking him from Carmen and putting him on her lap. She kisses the top of his head. Eulalia swears she sees her mother inhale sneakily, and knows that the baby still smells all pink and new and sweet. She misses him so much.

“Hi, ‘lia,” the baby says, and Eulalia waves. His speech improves every time she talks to him - Sydney and Carmen talk about his speech therapist like she’s God or Nigella Lawson. 

“Hey, Carm, how you doin’?”

“Good,” he says, “m-miss you.”

“Oh, I miss you! There’s this beautiful field of tulips I walk by every day on my way to class, and it always makes me think of you.”

“Me an’ Daddy’re grow-growing ‘rangers,” he says solemnly, and Eulalia squints at her parents, silently asking for a translation. Her mom and dad have this story about how when Eulalia was the same age the baby is now, they’d go to the fishmonger and she’d ask for slamber, and the fishmonger would ask what color it was and she would say pink and green. And the fishmonger would always tell her they didn’t have it and she’d say what ya got? And they’d go home with cod or sole . It took them months to work out she meant salmon. 

“Hydrangeas,” Carmen supplies, “these blue ones we got at the, uh, garden center over in Evanston. Carm picked ‘em.”

“Shrubs,” the baby says, in case she didn’t know. “Not flowers y-yet.” 

“Oh, I see,” Eulalia nods, “when will the flowers grow?”

“Spring.”

He’s so serious, his little hands clasped together on his pot belly. He looks exactly like their grandfather does when he’s watching the Bears lose. She takes a screenshot surreptitiously to send to Emmy and Bea later. 

“How’s nursery school going?” she asks. Baby Carmy screws his nose up, and Eulalia sees their mom in his furrowed brow, their dad in his chin. 

“Okay,” he says, “I-I don’t love it.”

Eulalia catches Sydney’s eye which is just the worst thing she could’ve done, because they both burst out laughing. Carmen tries to keep a straight face but it’s a losing battle and soon his shoulders are shaking too. 

“Oh, baby,” Sydney says, giving Baby Carmy a squeeze, “you’re the best kid in the world.”

“Why don’t you love it?” Eulalia asks, swallowing her giggles. 

“Too loud,” the baby says, nuzzling into his mother, “an’ too busy.” 

“I know it’s hard, buddy,” Carmen says, “you’ve been really brave.”

“You made a little friend, didn’t you?” says Sydney, stroking the baby’s hair. “You having any luck with that, Eulalia?”

“What’s your friend’s name, Carm?” Eulalia asks, pointedly ignoring her mother. It’s fucking embarrassing to admit to anyone, let alone your parents and your baby brother, that you’ve been at college nearly three whole months and you haven’t even made an acquaintance yet. 

“B-Barney,” Baby Carmy says.

“The…dinosaur? Is he your best friend?”

The baby shakes his head, curls bouncing. “Daddy’s my best friend.”

“Gee, thanks,” laughs Sydney, “not like I gave birth to you or anything.” 

“You speak to Cousin Michelle?” Carmen asks. His chin’s in his hand and there’s a crease in his brow. Eulalia feels bad. She’s not supposed to worry her parents anymore, she’s supposed to be a big girl, fully cooked and out there in the world, making them proud. 

“Yeah, we text and stuff,” Eulalia says in what she hopes is a reassuring way. “She’s just kind of hard to pin down. She’s so busy.”

“I can call her if you want - ”

“No, it’s okay, Dad, really,” she tucks an errant curl behind her ear, “I don’t mind being on my own. It’s kind of nice, actually.”

“Sure, yeah.” He doesn’t look like he believes her. 

“What’s for dinner?” Eulalia asks. Her favorite question. Sydney can’t resist it, and starts describing this stew she’s been playing around with, steamed vegetables and a hearty broth. Eulalia’s heart aches in her chest.

Maybe it’s a little harsh of her to say she’s not even made an acquaintance at school. She has a roommate and they eat lunch together sometimes. Her name’s Caitlin, she’s a cheery, chubby, redheaded girl from New England, and Eulalia likes her just fine. But she’s not a kindred spirit. They run out of things to say to each other. Caitlin has a lot of interests - she’s always knitting or going to salsa classes or reading a hefty nonfiction book about fourteenth century European monarchs. Eulalia’s interest is food. Talking about it, thinking about it, eating it. She has no room in her mind for anything else. She can hold a conversation about the WNBA for about five minutes before she starts to talk about what the Chicago Sky order from Ife when they eat there, and what she’d serve Candace Parker if she ever got the chance (baked potato soup with crispy bacon and green beans and Uncle Marcus’s Prinsesstårta for dessert). The third time Caitlin answers what’s for dinner with a shrug and a sandwich, Eulalia decides her people are probably going to be found elsewhere. 

She’s late for Introduction to Macroeconomics because she was fooling around with a tomato soup recipe until the early hours of the morning and she overslept, and the only seat available in the lecture theater is next to this round-faced South Asian girl who’s in all her classes but who she still doesn’t know the name of. The professor - who hit Eulalia with a great man, your father, great man on the first day of classes - starts droning on about scarcity and incentives and Eulalia’s eyes grow heavy. The girl sitting next to her sighs, softly enough that it doesn’t draw attention from any of their classmates but loudly enough that she can hear it.

“Get me in a fucking kitchen,” she says under her breath. Eulalia glances over, and the girl gives her a conspiratorial look. Like, this is so fucking dull, right? You’re bored shitless like me, aren’t you? Eulalia smiles and rolls her eyes a little, and the girl smiles back. 

When the class ends and they’re packing up their stuff, Eulalia taps her on the shoulder.

“Hey,” she says, “you think cardamom and vanilla would work in a tomato soup?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?” the girl says. “You’re the bear, right?”

She should’ve expected this. Eulalia braces herself. “Yeah,” she says, “well, kind of.”

“Jyoti D’Costa,” the girl says, sticking out her hand for Eulalia to shake. “What’re you doing for lunch?”

Jyoti’s from Kansas and she’s got a sweeter tooth than Baby Carmy. They catch the bus to the beach and get gelato from stands manned by acne-ridden teenagers. They get the train into the city and hit up every cupcake spot in Brooklyn, every doughnut place in Manhattan, and when they’re bored of that, they swing by the supermarket in Hyde Park and get stuff to make it themselves in the crappy communal kitchen. Jyoti kind of reminds Eulalia of her mother. She’s an only child and she’s funny in a way that not everybody gets, and a little spiky sometimes. When you crack her open though, she’s as warm as the summer sun. Eulalia catches a cold near the end of the semester, and Jyoti comes over with a vat of korri gassi and sixteen rotis.

“Did you make those?” Eulalia asks as Jyoti dishes it up on her desk, the pot balanced precariously on a statistics textbook. 

“Ha! No, I got ‘em at Whole Foods. The korri gassi is all me though, baby!”

“Is it - ” Eulalia pauses to sneeze, “is it a family recipe or something?”

Jyoti scoffs. “Yeah, no, my parents cannot cook to save their lives. Like, this is Mangalorean, this is from where they’re from but it’s not… this is not D’Costa family heritage by any means. That would be soggy fish sticks and burnt oven fries.”

She hands Eulalia a steaming bowl. “Watch it,” she says, “it’s hot.”

Just holding it near her face makes Eulalia feel better. She hasn’t been able to smell anything for the better part of a week and now, her old friends turmeric and coconut and cumin have come back to her. She’s so happy she could cry.

“How’d you learn?” she asks. Jyoti rips a roti in half and hands Eulalia a piece.

“Well, I was a latchkey kid with unlimited internet access, so. I watched, like, a lot of Masterchef.”

Eulalia doesn’t say what she’s thinking, which is that her parents were guest judges on Masterchef when she was little, and she’s actually in the episode, right at the end, being fed a goat’s cheese and cranberry tart by her dad. 

“And I wanted to teach myself to cook Indian food because it’s fucking good, firstly,” continues Jyoti, shovelling chicken onto the roti, “and secondly because I wanted, like, a relationship with India that was separate to my relationship with my parents. It’s a whole thing.”

Eulalia dips her roti into the curry and thinks about yam and jollof, cannoli and fishes. “I get it,” she says.

“Mmm, sure,” Jyoti laughs. “Fine dining’s favorite nepotism baby can relate to my second gen struggles.”

“Don’t call me that,” Eulalia says sharply, although it’s kind of muffled by all the snot blocking her sinuses. 

Jyoti considers her for a second. Embarrassment prickles Eulalia’s skin. She likes Jyoti, she wants Jyoti to think she’s smart and cool. She doesn’t feel very smart and cool right now, laid up in bed and crying about her connections like a character in a Victorian novel. 

“I know it pisses you off,” Jyoti says, slowly like she’s considering every word, “but like, it’s just a fact. I’m not saying - I was making a joke, man. Like, the fact of the matter is, you were born a couple of rungs further up the ladder than most other people. And I don’t think it helps anyone if you get shitty about it. You know, my dad drives a bus and my mom works at Walmart. I’m playing a completely different game to you.”

Eulalia doesn’t say anything, just nibbles at the roti and feels bad. “I wasn’t born rungs up the ladder,” she says eventually, “my mom was broke as fuck and my parents weren’t even together.”

Jyoti laughs hard. “Okay, sure,” she says, “you sound ridiculous, you know that, right?”

She clambers onto the end of Eulalia’s bed and pats her knee. “You wanna watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager?”

Eulalia does want to watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager and she doesn’t want to be alone. Her head’s heavy and she misses her mom. It’s nice to know that Jyoti’s friendship extends to her even at her most pathetic. 

“Sure,” Eulalia says, “this smells great, by the way.”

“Tastes even better,” says Jyoti, “eat up, please. I’m not letting the great Sydney Adamu’s baby die of consumption or whatever the fuck. She scares the shit out of me. I’ve seen her on Top Chef.”

Despite Jyoti and despite finally being allowed near a stove in Introduction to Gastronomy, Eulalia’s grateful for the winter break when it arrives. The digs from her classmates have mostly stopped, although there’s still a dickhead or two who likes to hide her knife from time to time. She shrugs it off, mostly. More pressing is how fucking boring she’s finding it all. She can’t do math for shit and when this girl in her Baking and Pastry Skill Development class asked the patisserie when they’re going to learn how to make puff-puff, the asshole scoffed. Something about the CIA makes her uncomfortable in her own skin. She should be thriving. Why isn’t she thriving? 

So it’s good to be back in the familiar embrace of a cold Chicago Christmas. The holidays are a serious business in her family. Her birthday is a week before Christmas, and Emmy’s is two days after hers. When Emmy was born, Carmen told Eulalia that the baby was her birthday present. They had joint parties until Eulalia got to middle-school and it became deeply uncool for there to be a bunch of little kids at her birthday. For her nineteenth and Emmy’s fourteenth, they have family dinner at Ife, Pop and Abuela and Uncle Richie and Aunt Nat and the cousins. Afterwards, Eulalia goes out with Eva and Sophia and a fake I.D. She drinks a copious amount of vodka and dances to Beyoncé and laughs until her ribs hurt. She rolls home at three o’clock in the morning, shoes in hand. 

Her mother wakes her up the next morning by bellowing “MORNING BABY, DID YOU HAVE A GOOD NIGHT?” in her face and then cackling with laughter when Eulalia groans and pulls the covers over her head. The hangover’s not too bad though, she’s mostly just dehydrated and tired from all the dancing. She doesn’t drink very often - her parents don’t drink at all. 

“How’s the head?” her mom says when Eulalia emerged from her bedroom in the early afternoon, a blanket draped over her shoulders. Sydney’s curled up on the couch, laptop on her knees, the baby tucked into her side. 

“I’ll live,” Eulalia says with a sigh, plonking herself down beside them. A hand goes to Baby Carmy’s curls, stroking his little head. “Eva parties hard, huh?”

“You know those DeVry girls get down,” Sydney says, “you want anything to eat?”

“Mmm, maybe later. I’m kind of nauseous.”

“That’ll be the vodka. I can make you something. Even if it’s just toast?”

“Nah, it’s okay, really,” Eulalia says with a yawn, “what did you guys do last night?”

Sydney nudges the baby gently. “What did we do, Carm? After we had dinner?”

“Went Pop’s,” the baby mumbles.

“And what did we do at Pop’s?”

“Ate cake.”

“And what did we watch, what was the movie we watched? With Daddy in it?”

“R-ratatouille,” the baby says, and he grins sheepishly at Eulalia. She laughs.

“Is Dad the chef or the rat?” 

“Daddy’s Remy,” the baby says, like it’s obvious.

“That’s the rat,” says Sydney. Eulalia laughs again, and tugs gently on the baby’s ringlets. 

“You’re a funny kid,” she tells him, and he giggles. “Where is Dad, actually?”

“Emergency ham run,” Sydney says. “Emmy’s gone with him to make sure he doesn’t, like, find and kill a pig with his own bare hands.”

“Ah,” Eulalia nods knowingly, “Christmas carbonara.”

“Christmas fuckin’ carbonara,” Sydney says with a sigh. “Bea’s reading in her room, very cute, very wholesome, and Carm’s helping me answer emails.”

Baby Carmy nods solemnly and nestles further into Sydney, clutching at her waist with a pudgy arm. 

“The grind doesn’t even stop for the holidays, huh?” 

“You know it,” Sydney snorts. “Can I ask you about this, actually? My, uh, agent - ”

“You don’t need to be embarrassed by Hannah, Mom, I’ve known her since I was ten.”

“I know, I know, it just sounds like an asshole thing to say. My agent, like who are you? Anyway, she thinks we should do, like, a pilot.”

Eulalia asks her to repeat herself. “Pilot as in…flying an airplane?”

Her mother laughs. “As in like, for television, like Cooking With Sydney, Julia Child shit. It would be, um, adapted, I guess, from the books and I would be kind of going around, meeting people, talking about food, cooking, obviously. What do you think? Do you - like, does it sound like a good idea? To you?” 

She chews her bottom lip nervously. Glee throws off the remnants of Eulalia’s hangover, shooting through her like an electric shock. Cooking With Sydney! She’s so pleased and so proud. Her mind races - they could do an episode in New Orleans with her mom’s cousins, go to New York, maybe even all the way to Ibadan if they have the budget for it. 

“Mom,” Eulalia says, grinning, “that’s - that’s so cool, what the fuck!”

“So you’re here for it? You don’t think it’s a dumb idea?”

“No, not at all, yes, absolutely, yes - tell me everything, like, is Dad doing it with you, or - ?”

Sydney snorts with laughter. “Yeah, right, no. Um, he’s into it though. I think it would be cool to get him onboard as like, I don’t know, a consulting producer or whatever, but - I feel kind of weird about the whole thing.”

“Say more please,” Eulalia says, the old family refrain. Her mom grimaces and puts the laptop aside, pulls the baby into her arms and onto her lap. He rests his little face on her chest and sighs contentedly. 

“Well, it would mean stepping back from Ife,” Sydney says, “and spending more time away from home, and I don’t know, I guess… I always thought that eventually, y’know, when I was done with everything, your dad and I would, like, go back to making sandwiches together. And when you got your diploma you’d come home and that would be it. I don’t know if that’s stupid.”

“That’s not stupid,” Eulalia shakes her head, “we can still do that. This just means you’re not done with everything yet. It’s good, right, this is a good thing?”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing,” Sydney smiles. “What do you think, Carm, you wanna be on Mommy’s TV show?”

The baby shakes his head and they laugh. 

“What about you, baby?” Sydney asks Eulalia, resting her cheek against the top of Baby Carmy’s head. “Say fuck it and come be my glamorous assistant?”

Eulalia sighs. “I don’t know if - I mean, I might, but not - ”

Sydney’s forehead creases in concern. “You still hating school?”  

“I don’t know if I hate it,” Eulalia says, “I’m just, like, it’s so - I’ve got Jyoti, and that’s great, and we’re actually cooking, but I don’t know. I can’t - it feels, like, weirdly wrong. I had this idea in my head that I would go and it would be incredible and I would feel - but then it feels completely crazy to be like, yeah, I’ll just drop out, because like, it’s kind of my dream, y’know?”

It’s amazing how much better she feels just telling her mom. It’s amazing how much better she feels just sitting next to her mom, to be honest. Her skin feels like it’s the right size. 

“So?” Sydney says. “You’re not a tree, Eulalia, you can move. Dreams change all the time.”

The baby raises his head with bleary eyes, looking up at his mother with reverence. Sydney drops a kiss on his forehead, gentle and quick. 

“All my dreams came true,” she says, “and then some. And what’s great is I get to keep dreaming, keep wanting. And it’s my job to help you work out what you want. So the CIA isn’t working for you, so what? Do something else. Find the thing.”

Chapter Text

Barcelona is so old and so hot. The building Eulalia lives in is older than the city of Chicago. She takes pictures of fourteenth century alleyways and Roman walls and texts them to Caitlin. They’re much better friends now they’re no longer roommates. She thought she was prepared for the heat, thought Catalonia would have nothing on Illinois, but she was wrong. In Barcelona, the heat’s like the embrace of a lover urging you back to bed, to do nothing today. It fucks with her cooking, the little of it she’s doing. She’s bottom of the pile at Dulce, her job is basically anything that needs doing. Tweezing herbs onto coques, serving drinks, sprinting to the butcher when they run out of sausage. She fucking loves it. Her body hums with life. When she lets herself into her tiny apartment at two o’clock in the morning, peels off the socks sticking to her feet with sweat and blisters, it feels good. It feels right. Nobody calls her baby on the line, nobody ruffles her hair at the end of service. On her fifth or sixth day working there, she’s up to her elbows in soap suds when Paloma, the executive chef, approaches. Paloma hadn’t even hired her - it was Daphne the chef de cuisine who answered her call and met her for coffee to discuss terms and conditions. 

“Chef Eulalia,” Paloma says, pronouncing her name the Spanish way, the way her Abuela does. “How are you settling in?”

“Good, thank you, chef.”

“Chef Daphne tells me you’ve only worked in one kitchen before,” Paloma says. Eulalia’s hands still in the hot water. “Your mother’s?”

“Well, I did a semester at the Culinary Institute - ”

“With respect, that doesn’t count,” Paloma says. “Now, here, at Dulce, we are a family but I am not your mother. If you are expecting - ”

“I’m not expecting anything,” Eulalia says quickly. Paloma gives her a wan smile. 

“Please don’t interrupt me,” she says, although not unkindly. Embarrassment burns Eulalia’s cheeks. 

“Sorry, chef,” she mumbles.

“I know of your parents’ work,” Paloma says, “although I’ve never had the privilege of eating their food. If you have any expectations that you’ll be receiving preferential treatment due to your connections, I warn you to temper them now.”

“Yes, chef,” Eulalia says, “thank you.”

She returns to scrubbing the pot with vigor. Paloma says nothing for a moment, just watches Eulalia do battle with stock stains. 

“We’re very happy to have you here,” she says, quiet and warm. “It’s good to have a saint in the house.”

Slowly but surely, Eulalia lays the foundation of a life for herself. After service, she goes out drinking in the Gothic Quarter with the line cooks. She finds that she enjoys a deep red wine and kalamata olives. Hector and Estel are funny and loud and they call her The American , which makes her laugh. They remind her of her parents a little bit, the way they’re always finishing each other’s sentences. Estel takes her to the Camp Nou and they scream for FC Barcelona until their voices crack. Two German girls named Hildy and Clara live in the apartment below her, and on Sundays, they smoke cigarettes on Eulalia’s balcony and cook her schnitzel with green beans and potato salad. They’re studying difficult, unwieldy subjects that Eulalia doesn’t understand, astrophysics and medieval philosophy. On Monday nights, the three of them go out dancing together, and Eulalia hooks up with handsome university students who never call her back. In Dulce’s kitchen, Daphne teaches her how to make ollada. The pot simmers and stews all through service, and if any of the dishwashers go to move it, Daphne snaps at them. On her days off, Eulalia goes to the beach with her neighbors, lies in the sun and reads cookbooks. She buys her sisters and the baby Santa Eulalia pendants from the cathedral gift shop and sends them off with a tender kiss each. Paloma puts her on sauces, and she gets cramp in her hand from using the pestle and mortar for hours. Her hair smells of garlic and she calls her dad while she’s waiting for her tram. Usually he’s making dinner, and Emmy and Bea wander in and out of the kitchen, yelling gossip and pinching Carmen’s ingredients, laughing around snap peas. It makes Eulalia feel warm and safe, tied to them all with an invisible string. Her mom’s a better texter than her dad. It’s hard for her to get a spare fifteen minutes with her schedule. Eulalia wakes up in the morning to pictures of Baby Carmy, articles Sydney’s read and thinks she might like, stupid memes from Instagram, old comic strips from Peanuts and Nancy. In the midst of service, while her body aches and she’s sweating and swearing and crazed, Eulalia remembers her parents, sleeping in each other’s arms on the other side of the sea, and her sisters and the baby, and she keeps going. 

During her sixth month in Barcelona, Eulalia is promoted to line cook, and she falls madly, wildly in love. These two events are linked. She’s her mother’s daughter, after all. The team shifts in the way kitchens do - Yannick the dishwasher goes back to school, Hector gets a sous gig at a fusion place in El Born, and Daphne decides to have a baby. Her replacement, Paloma tells them at family, is an Englishman named Oliver Brandon. This is all the information she gives them. On the tram home after service, Eulalia types his name into Google. He has no social media presence, and one brief interview in The Guardian, accompanied by several crisp images of a white man in blues and whites. Oliver Brandon is handsome, with a firm, fierce brow, brooding brown eyes and high, sharp cheekbones. But it’s his resume that truly excites Eulalia. He didn’t finish the diploma he started in Paris - she feels a frisson of kinship - instead, he went to Singapore, then to Hong Kong, then to Manila. He spent a little time in Australia, won a Chef’s Hat, retained a star. And then he went to London, where he grew up, and opened his own spot. It folded after six months. Eulalia’s heart aches for him, the way it does for anyone who wanted something and didn’t get it. She wonders what he’s doing in Barcelona and how he knows Paloma. 

She tastes his food before she meets him. Maybe if it had been the other way around, it would’ve gone differently. She’ll never know. She’s had the morning off to get her hair cut in Nou Barris, and she rolls up to the restaurant as they’re wrapping up family. Estel’s clearing the plates and when she sees Eulalia, she wolf-whistles. 

“Oh, it’s the most beautiful girl in Barcelona!” 

Eulalia flips her curls over her shoulder and strikes a pose with a laugh. “You like it?” 

“Gorgeous, gorgeous,” Estel gives the chef’s kiss. “I saved you a plate, honey, you hungry?”

She gestures to the table. There’s a full plate there, shredded cod and tomato salad, esqueixada de bacallà, a knife and fork waiting for Eulalia. 

“I’m starved,” Eulalia says, “should I take this out back?” 

“No, no, you sit down,” says Estel, “we got time.” 

Eulalia’s eaten this meal before, dozens of times. They had a variant on the menu a couple of months ago. Daphne had shown her how to shred the cod by hand, how to be gentle but not scared. But this is different, sharper and sweeter and crisper. She can’t work out what it is. Is it a herb, is it acid? Her fingers itch to make notes, to break it down piece by piece, ingredient by ingredient, like her mother taught her. 

“Is this one of yours?” she asks Estel. “It’s fire, chef.” 

“Not me, honey,” Estel says, “Chef Brandon.” 

“He’s here?” 

The door to the kitchen swings open, Sus from front-of-house hurries out, a big tray of cutlery on her hip, and a British accent carries through the air. It’s more refined than Eulalia’s uncle Luca, plummier and jammier. It kind of reminds her of all those period dramas her aunt Nat loves so much. It intrigues her even more - who is this dude, who cooks like this and talks like that? She keeps eating, and with every mouthful she becomes more and more convinced that this guy’s a fucking genius. And then the door swings open, and the best looking man she’s ever seen in her life steps out, haughty and handsome and brooding, and she’s gone. 

For the first couple of months she barely speaks to him, other than yes, chef and no, chef and thank you, chef. He runs his kitchen so differently from Daphne. He’s harsher, more exacting. She kind of likes it. She’s always wanted to be the best, to be taken seriously. If he knows who her parents are, he never mentions it. He doesn’t mention anything, much. He’s silent during family, when Eulalia laughs with the servers and Estel. He spends hours locked in the office with Paloma. They argue a lot. Daphne and Paloma never argued. Eulalia often wonders if Brandon’s got dirt on Paloma or something, or if she owes him a favor. She could probably ask her parents if they know anything about him. It’s hard to get them in the same room at the same time these days. Her mom’s always off filming somewhere, her dad’s ferrying her sisters around, but it does happen, once or twice in a blue moon. Every time she’s on the phone to them, she thinks about asking, but she never does. She wants something for herself. And she’s never been able to hide her feelings from her mother. If she asks about Brandon, Sydney will know immediately. She’ll know exactly how Eulalia’s face burns when he stands close to her, how she makes notes in her head of what he eats, what he drinks, how his hair falls in his eyes. So Eulalia sticks to topics she knows are safe: food, the baby’s speech therapy, and if Eva really is getting back with that prick. And all the while her heart aches and aches, and it’s nobody’s business but her own. 

When he finally, finally talks to her, it’s about tomatoes, of all things. She comes in early on Tuesdays to prep the pa amb tomáquets, only today, she finds Brandon at his station, slicing and dicing in the quiet. 

“Oh,” she says, feeling a little stupid. “I was going to do that.” 

“Well,” he says, “I’m doing it.” 

Eulalia stands in the middle of the kitchen, not sure what to do with her hands. 

“Is there - have I - is my work not - ?” She can’t string a sentence together. 

“Your work is fine, chef,” Brandon says. “I’m just trying something.” 

“What are you trying?” 

“Heirlooms,” he says. He stops chopping, and holds a slice out to her, the juice dripping between his fingers. “Here,” he says, “try.” 

She has a vision of herself leaning forward and eating it directly from his hand, and she shudders. Get a grip, ‘lia. She takes the offered fruit delicately, trying to touch him as little as possible. She nibbles at the slice. He goes back to his work. 

“Good?” 

“It’s beautiful,” she says, because it is. It’s sweet and tough and tender. “Where’s it from?” 

“Vertical Fields. Grate the garlic, chef.” He pauses, glances up at her, and then adds: “Please?”

Eulalia nods and goes to get her chopping board. She spends the morning trying to grate garlic with trembling hands. 

The seasons change and Eulalia gets lonely. Daphne’s baby is round and sweet and reminds her of her brother. Daphne brings him in for lunch and Eulalia uses her five to feed him puréed carrots and mashed potatoes. Sometimes she feels a gaze on the back of her neck, and she knows that Chef Brandon is in the doorway, watching her, but when she looks round, he’s gone. Estel joins Hector at the fusion place. Hildy graduates and Clara moves in with her boyfriend. Paloma and Brandon have this huge row right in the middle of service. It’s over the aioli, of all things. He wants it food-processor smooth; she wants the texture from a pestle and mortar. It drags on and on and just as Eulalia’s head begins to pound with a headache, Sus throws a dish against the wall and walks out. She never comes back. Carmen and Sydney start to miss Eulalia’s calls. Sydney’s show gets renewed, the baby starts elementary school, Emmy’s on a soccer team. Every time she gets hold of them, she feels further away. Her dad gets a new tattoo that she didn’t even know he was thinking about - daisies for the baby, to match the narcissuses and the rose he has for the girls. She hears about things weeks, sometimes months after they’ve happened, like Pop’s angina attack and Eva getting a new boyfriend and Soph dropping out of Northwestern. At work, she shreds cod alone. She doesn’t feel the pull of the thread anymore - most days she can barely feel it at all. 

It happens on the first Eulalia’s birthday. In the lull between lunch and dinner service, she goes out into the alley to call her parents, as is tradition. They don’t pick up, but Sydney texts that they’ll call her back later. She doesn’t say when later is. And Eulalia can’t help it, the tears start falling before she can stop them. She feels so small and so alone. She wonders what the first Eulalia would say. Her first born granddaughter, her namesake, sat on a doorstep in Spain, sobbing her heart out. She feels untethered from the earth, from herself. Eulalia buries her face in her hands and tries to cry quietly. The door to the kitchen swings open. 

“Chef?” 

Eulalia inhales raggedly and wipes her eyes with her sleeves. Brandon stands beside her, cigarette between his teeth. 

“Sorry,” she says, “uh, I’ll - ” 

“No, it’s alright,” he steps out, lights up. He leans against the wall beside her. He’s so handsome, it makes her teeth ache. He smokes in silence and she just watches him, her eyes still swimming with tears. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Brandon asks her. 

“Oh, that’s - it’s really not - I’m fine, honestly.”

“You’re crying, Chef.” 

“Oh, I’m just - it’s just - onions.” 

He laughs at that. She’s never heard him laugh before. He squats down so they’re at eye level. “You’re, uh, Carmen Berzatto’s daughter, aren’t you?”

Oh. Right. She nods. 

“Incredible man,” he says, “a real shame he doesn’t work anymore.” 

“He works,” Eulalia says before she can stop herself. “He just doesn’t, like, he gave up fine dining when my brother was born.” 

Brandon nods and straightens up. He blows smoke up into the sky. “He’s missed,” he says. 

“Yeah.” 

“You’ve inherited his talents,” Brandon says. Eulalia briefly wonders if she should tell him Carmen’s not her biological father and she’s got a mother who won a Michelin star too, but she decides against it. This might be the only time she gets any praise from him. She should probably enjoy it while it lasts. 

“Thank you,” she says, and smiles up at him. She feels a bit steadier, so she stands up and dusts herself off. He’s looking at her strangely, as if he knows her from somewhere and can’t quite place her. 

“You must miss him,” he says. Eulalia nods. 

“Yeah,” she says, because she does. Her eyes start to water again. “Do you, um, do you miss your dad?” 

He looks at her with something like surprise. “No,” he says. 

She’s not sure what she’s supposed to say to that. 

“Oh,” is all she can come up with. 

He laughs again. “You smoke?” 

“Only with a drink,” Eulalia says. Brandon nods and flicks the ash off his cigarette. 

“We’ll have to go out for a drink then.” 

Eulalia’s mouth goes dry. He’s very close. He smells like garlic and onion. When she looks back on this moment in years to come, she will come to the conclusion that she probably would’ve been more skeptical if he hadn’t smelled so much like home. Brandon drops the cigarette to the ground and stubs it out with the heel of his shoe. He reaches for her, his hands cupping her face, slender fingers stroking her jaw. He’s not gentle necessarily, but the spotty, gangly students never touched her like this and it makes her shudder. He kisses her, opening his mouth, tasting like smoke. It’s surreal. She was just crying. Her phone’s still in her hand. He pulls away, kisses her again more chastely, once, twice. Her face is burning up. 

“Chef,” he says, and clears his throat.

“Chef,” Eulalia echoes. Brandon turns into the kitchen, and doesn’t look back once. 

During service that night, she keeps trying to catch his eye. She wants some kind of proof that the afternoon did actually happen, that it wasn’t a dream brought on by heat stroke or something. But he never looks at her. He calls the tickets, he criticizes the broken sauces and he never looks at Eulalia once. The ache of her feet is realer to her than whatever the hell happened in that alleyway. Somewhere between the fifteenth seared duck and running the food processor for the tenth time, she decides she’s just going to have to charge it to the game. It’ll be just some weird story she tells about a weird boss she had. She can already imagine herself laughing with Eva and Sophia about it, glasses of red wine in hand. Maybe she can get a gig at the fusion place with Estel and Hector. She’s definitely not the first person this has happened to, and she sure as shit won’t be the last.

After closing, she’s texting Emmy and dawdling at the lockers, when Brandon approaches her. 

“Hello,” he says, and she jumps a little, disturbed from her own little world.

“Chef,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“You ready to go?”

She’s never had a good poker face, and her nose screws up involuntarily. He chuckles. 

“For a drink?”

Oh. Oh. “Right. Yeah. No, yeah.”

She follows him out of the restaurant, turning the lights off as she goes. 

At midnight, Sydney calls, but it goes unanswered.

It’s casual and it’s not like Eulalia’s keeping it a secret on purpose, she just doesn’t have anyone to tell at work. She told Jyoti. If she saw Estel and Hector more often, she’d probably tell them about it, but they’re so busy these days. Daphne stops bringing her baby over, and she’s having another one too so she probably won’t be back anytime soon. Paloma and Brandon - Paloma and Oliver, they keep arguing. One evening, drinking tea in his apartment, Eulalia plucks up the courage to ask him what they argue about. 

“It’s a lot of things,” he says, “she’s set in her ways. She doesn’t like the way I run my kitchen. I don’t - do we have to talk about this right now? Come and kiss me.”

Eulalia laughs, and does as he says. They can talk about it later. 

Oliver’s not good at not working - he has to go to London a lot, for various things that he says are too boring to tell her about. It doesn’t bother her, she can use her imagination. Her parents were kind of like that when she was a kid, always at a conference or an awards ceremony or a launch party. They used to take her with them. But Oliver doesn’t. He leaves her in his apartment on her days off, and she lies around reading his cookbooks and raiding his fridge and waiting for him. The summer is hot and everything takes on a dreamlike sheen. She starts to suspect she’s only a real person when Oliver’s around. Her body doesn’t feel solid unless he’s touching it. She thinks that might be what it’s like to fall in love. She wants to ask her mother, she feels like she should ask her mother, but for some reason, it never comes up. She barely hears from Sydney these days. It’s alright. Really, it is. She’s a grown up. Sydney’s got three kids at home and a television show and a restaurant and an aging father. She can’t spend all her time checking in on her eldest child who isn’t even a child anymore. Eulalia watches her mother’s programme, and thinks: who is that woman? Maybe the thread that tied them to each other has fallen off, slipped into the Atlantic Ocean, but that’s okay. You have to cut the cord sometime. 

Every day brings Eulalia closer to the age her mother was when she was born. She’s already older than the first Eulalia was when she had Sydney. She makes a joke about it to Oliver one night - when are you going to give me a baby? - and the look on his face sends her into hysterics. 

“I’m joking,” she says through giggles, “swear to God, you should see your face.”

“That’s not fucking funny, Eulalia,” Oliver says, “who the fuck wants to be lumbered with a kid at our age?”

She snorts. “Dude, you’re like, thirty-five. You’re older than my dad was when I was born.”

“Your stepdad,” Oliver says, like he’s correcting her pronunciation of some fancy French dish. It’s kind of jarring to hear - she’s never referred to Carmen as her stepdad in her life. When she confessed the truth of her origins to Oliver, in his bed at two o’clock in the morning, it was discussed in terms of biology, as though her lack of Berzatto DNA was a genetic defect she had. 

“Yeah,” she says, “my stepdad, I guess. Anyway, he was twenty-eight.”

He doesn’t laugh or smile. He just sighs, as if this conversation is exhausting him. “Whatever,” he says, “you shouldn’t aspire to repeat the mistakes of your parents.”

They don’t touch each other at work, as a general rule. To be honest, they barely speak to each other at work. He and Paloma continue to argue, in Catalan and English. Eulalia wonders why Oliver won’t leave. He could be anywhere, do anything. If he doesn’t like Paloma, why’s he tied himself to her like this? 

“It’s complicated,” is all he’ll say when she brings it up, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He doesn’t want to talk about a lot. Eulalia doesn’t mind. He’s such an impressive man, so handsome and talented. She can hardly believe he wants her sometimes. She walks the streets of Barcelona surrounded by tourists and locals alike, thinking to herself: none of these people know I am sleeping with my hot, older boss. She doesn’t feel like a real girl at all, she’s a character in a movie, surely. People can’t really live like this. People can’t really spend their days bathed in sunlight and their nights in the arms of their lovers. But somehow she does. Oliver brings her back treats from England - candy she used to get for her birthday from her uncle Luca, funny little postcards from market towns and cathedral cities. She asks him if he’ll take her there one day, and he shrugs and says: maybe. 

Her mom calls. 

“Hey, baby,” Sydney says, “what’s your January looking like?” 

Eulalia hasn’t thought about it. She doesn’t see too far ahead these days. When’s Oliver back? What’s Oliver doing? She can’t remember the last time she spoke to Clara or Hildy. Or Jyoti, even. When she imagines January, she hopes for rain. She wants to lie in bed with Oliver and listen to the pitter-patter of raindrops on the skylight. She won’t tell her mother that though. 

“I don’t know,” she says, “why?” 

“Well,” says Sydney, “I don’t know if you know this, but uh, it’s a pretty big birthday for your dad.”

It’s his fiftieth. He’s twice the age of the first Eulalia. This will be the first decade of Carmen’s life that his brother never got to see before him. 

“And,” Sydney continues, “you know, we love you and we miss you and we want to see you.” 

Her parents, here, in her Barcelona. She can’t imagine it, which is silly really because weren’t the summers of her childhood spent in the sleepy sun of various European cities? There was Copenhagen when she was four, the last vacation before Emmy was born. They went to Rome when she was six, she remembers that one the best because her mom turned thirty while they were there. They threw coins into the Trevi fountain and ate rum-soaked sponge cake. They went to London the summer before her tenth birthday, and Uncle Luca took her to a soccer game, just the two of them. She still has a red and white scarf, and a fondness for Bukayo Saka. She and her dad went to Berlin for a week the Easter before she turned fifteen. They spent the whole time eating doner kebabs and doing walking tours of street art. She’d started to badger him about taking her to Paris but then the baby came and Carmen had other things on his mind. Barcelona is Eulalia’s and Eulalia’s alone. To see Carmen and Sydney here would pop the bubble. In Barcelona, she’s a worldly woman, respected in her field, an older and mysterious lover on her arm. She feels so far away from the odd little girl she once was, her mother’s shadow. The idea of Oliver Brandon learning about that child embarrasses her. How could he ever take her seriously again, if he knew she once ate so much cotton candy at the Illinois State Fair she threw up bright pink? 

But then again, she really, really misses her mom. 

“What are your parents like?” Eulalia asks Oliver one bleary-eyed morning in January. They’re picking at fruit and yogurt for breakfast. Barcelona Femeni were in the restaurant last night, they stayed late and asked for selfies. Eulalia’s kind of exhausted. Oliver doesn’t say anything, just pokes around in his bowl looking for blueberries.

“Dickheads,” he says finally. “What are your parents like?” 

“Um,” Eulalia shrugs, “mine are like, nice, I guess. Why - why are yours dickheads?” 

He shrugs. “Because they are,” he says, “why are you asking?”

“I was just curious,” she says, “my, um, my mom and dad - ” 

“Stepdad.”

“Yeah, my mom and - my parents are going to be visiting soon.”

“Visiting what?”

“Uh, me. And the city. It’s my - it’s Carmen’s fiftieth, so.” 

“Right,” Oliver says, a full sentence like that’s the end of the conversation. Eulalia’s skin feels tight and prickly with embarrassment. 

“Would you… want to meet them?” 

“When is it?”

“Like, week after next.”

“Can’t. I’m in London then.”

Eulalia nods. “Oh, right, okay. I didn’t know that. Uh, are you gonna be - how long are you gonna be gone for? Because they’re here for a week, y’know, and that’s a long time. And they are…I don’t know if you know this, but they are very accomplished chefs.”

“Don’t do that, Eulalia,” Oliver says, dropping his spoon in his bowl with a clatter. “It’s beneath you.” 

“I’m just saying - ” 

“Have you told them about me?” 

“No,” she says. They’re both tired, that’s what this is. He’s being an asshole because he’s tired. 

“What happened to let’s keep things casual?” 

“I just thought, y’know, you might want to casually get lunch with them or something. They’re like, nice and normal, they’re not going to grill you about your fucking intentions, or - or - or force you down the aisle with a shotgun, or anything like that.”

“Jesus,” Oliver sighs. “Well, I can’t. So.” 

“That’s okay,” Eulalia says, and she sets her bowl down so she can wrap her arms around his shoulders, trying to soothe him. He’s rigid in her embrace. “You’re a busy guy. It’s totally fine. They’ll have a ton of stuff they’ll want to do, my mom’s an itinerary girlie. It’s alright.” 

She kisses his cheek but he’s unmoving. He gets like this sometimes. He goes somewhere she can’t follow. 

“We’ve got to get to work,” he says, moving out of her arms. 

She’s nervous as all hell, waiting at the airport for her parents to arrive. What if she doesn’t recognise them - or worse, they don’t recognise her? Will they like her, this new woman she’s grown into? Will they still know their baby? She spent ages trying to choose an outfit for the occasion. In the end she went for vintage denim overalls - Levi’s, naturally - and a nineties Bulls shirt she picked up out in Sant Cugat. When Sydney spots her, she laughs, and throws herself into her daughter’s arms.

“You had that exact outfit when you were a baby,” she says, kissing Eulalia’s head. “Did you do that on purpose? Did you think we wouldn’t know who you were?” 

“No,” Eulalia lies through teary laughter. She never wants to go this long without being held by her mother again. Carmen wraps his arms around them both. Eulalia, taller than her parents, rests her chin on their heads, and they squeeze her tight. 

“You good?” she asks when they disentangle. “Flight good? You want anything to eat?” 

“Please, real food,” groans Sydney, letting go of her daughter and grappling with her suitcase. “Why is it even the fancy shit on planes sucks? Like, I’m flying business, why are you trying to make me eat stale bread?”

“Sour grapes, too,” Carmen says, taking the suitcase from Sydney. Eulalia laughs.

“Literal sour grapes!” Sydney throws her hands up in the air in disgust. “And these mushy little walnut things. Please, Eulalia, baby, my firstborn, fruit of my loins, please take me to get some real fucking food!”

Eulalia laughs harder and links arms with her mother. They head out towards the taxi ranks, their steps in time with each other, and Carmen following with the bags. 

Really, she shouldn’t have worried. It is a little odd to be standing in the kitchen of her apartment with her mom and dad, watching Sydney rifle through her fridge, handing ingredients to Carmen with commentary. But mostly it’s nice. It’s like home. Eulalia feels four years old again. 

“These peppers look great, okay, I feel like I want a cheese too, maybe? Carm?”

“You got halloumi?” Carmen asks, and Sydney retrieves a slab from the depths of Eulalia’s refrigerator with a gleeful cackle.

“Yes! Like a fried halloumi. Ooh, and onions - where’d you get these? The color is so good!” 

“Farmer’s market,” Eulalia says, “there’s some good ones near here, we can go tomorrow if you want?” 

Sydney smiles with all her teeth. “It’s up to you, baby, we’re in your house.”

“Eulalia,” Carmen says, handing her the peppers, “slice these for me, honey.” 

She does as she’s told. Her mother chatters away about a veg guy they used to have at Ife, and her father chips in occasionally with anecdotes from The Beef, and the thread tugs tight. 

Carmen and Sydney are staying at a fancy hotel that Eulalia is like, eighty percent sure they’re not paying for. Seeing them waiting for her at the end of her street in the early morning gives her a little kick. They’re really here. At the farmer’s market, Sydney cracks jokes in Spanish with the tradesmen, an arm wrapped around Carmen’s waist. Eulalia gets the ingredients for Daphne’s ollada. She’s got an itching to show off for her parents, a bubbling inside her reminiscent of when she was a little girl who wanted to show them what she’d made at school that day. She takes a picture of the veal and the carrots in her bag and sends it to Oliver. She wants him to say that looks great, wish I was there, or even better I’m coming home now, but she knows he won’t. Her dad watches her fiddle around with her phone, concern screwed up in the corner of his mouth. 

“You good?” Carmen asks her as they wander back to her apartment. 

“Yeah,” she says, “you?” 

“Good,” he says, “it’s beautiful here.” 

Eulalia nods. “Yeah.”

“You happy?” 

“Yeah.”

“Good. That's good.” 

He looks like he’s going to say something else, but then he thinks better of it, just puts his arm around her shoulders. Eulalia thinks she understands. 

Sydney watches the stew with interest while Carmen washes the dishes even though Eulalia told him he didn’t have to do that. Eulalia keeps checking her phone, her skin itching with anxiety. Oliver still hasn’t text back. 

“How d’you serve this at Dulce?” Sydney asks. 

“What? Oh, uh, it’s not on the menu anymore. Oliver - I mean, Chef Brandon didn’t think it was elevated enough. But when we did, we just served it straight like that.” 

Sydney hums and stirs the pot gently. 

“Where’s he from, this Brandon guy?” Carmen nudges his daughter’s shoulder with his own. 

“England, I think,” says Eulalia, even though she knows the exact hospital in the exact borough of London Oliver was born in. 

“Good boss?”

“Uh,” Eulalia’s phone screen lights up and she tries to resist the urge to snatch it up in case it’s him. She’s not sure how to answer her father. Is Oliver a good boss? Would a good boss take her to bed every night? Would a good boss leave her on read? 

“You think about switching the beans for rice?” Sydney suggests. “Like an orzo or - ooh, you could go for heat, does it need heat?”

“Try it and tell me,” Eulalia says. She loses the battle with herself and checks her phone. It’s the work group chat, one of the dishwashers asking to swap a shift. She tries not to visibly deflate.

“You alright, honey?” Carmen asks. Eulalia can’t meet his eyes. She’s convinced that if she does he’ll be able to tell, the same way he could always tell if she was lying about who ate the last yogurt or who broke the TV when she was a kid. 

“Yeah,” she says, “I’m fine.” 

“Can I try something, baby?” asks Sydney. “You got basmati rice?”

“There should be some in the cupboard,” Eulalia says, although she’s not actually sure what she’s got in her cupboards these days. She’s at Oliver’s so much. 

“So hear me out,” Sydney says, on her tip-toes rifling through Eulalia’s jars, “you could do a jollof rice, right, with the veal and the ollada, like rich and earthy?”

“That sounds fucking fire, Mom,” Eulalia says, “you need a chair or something?” 

“I need your long-ass arms,” says Sydney, “get over here, please.” 

“I might not have any,” Eulalia confesses, tossing her phone aside and joining her mother at the countertop. “I’m so behind on my grocery shopping, you know how it is.” 

“When I was your age, I pretty much exclusively lived on dead plates and frozen pizza,” her mother laughs, “and your dad was worse!” 

“Hey,” Carmen objects, and Sydney just laughs more. The tightness of Eulalia’s skin eases as she retrieves the rice, as Carmen starts slicing tomatoes and Sydney grates garlic. The winter sun bathes them in gold, and Eulalia’s phone lies on top of her microwave, long forgotten. 

On Carmen’s fiftieth birthday, Eulalia takes her parents to the Catedral de Barcelona, where the crypt of the saint who shares her name is held. It’s a beautiful building, imposing and grand. Eulalia walks past it most days, barely giving it a second thought, but today it kind of takes her breath away. It’s a crisp January morning, fresh and sharp like a perfectly ripe lemon. There’s not a lot of tourists out, although there’s a class of teenagers on a school trip clogging up the entrance. They’ve all got huge rucksacks on, and their harried teachers can’t seem to get them to stop talking at the tops of their voices. Carmen, Sydney and Eulalia weave around them, Eulalia clinging to her mother’s hand like she’s three years old again. 

“Ugh,” Sydney says in a low voice befitting their location once they’re free of the school kids, “youths!” 

“Don’t you have two teenagers at home?” Eulalia asks with a laugh. 

“Yeah,” Sydney says, “but I like them ‘cause they’re mine.”

“Syd,” Carmen says quietly, “look up.” 

Her head goes back and she gasps in delight. “Now that’s a fucking ceiling,” she says, awestruck. 

Out of the corner of her eye, Eulalia sees her father make the sign of the cross. Without discussion, the three of them make their way across the cathedral towards the altars where candles flicker red and gold. 

“I haven’t got anything,” Carmen says. He holds his empty hands out in front of him, like he can’t believe a good Catholic boy like him would forget something so crucial. Eulalia’s seen pictures of his first communion - he wore a suit three sizes too big. 

“There’s a vending machine,” she says softly, and gestures down the way where there is, indeed, a vending machine. Sydney snorts and then tries to turn it into a cough because an elderly Catalan lady is glaring at her. 

“You want one?” Eulalia asks her mother. Sydney doesn’t believe in God, but she nods anyway. 

Eulalia leaves her parents standing vigil over the votives and purchases three of the biggest candles, tall and fat and encased in red glass emblazoned with the logo of the cathedral. Emblazoned with her own name. One for her father, for Uncle Mikey, who left the world soon after she entered it. One for her mother, for the first Eulalia, who she would never truly know. And one for herself, for the living and the dead, for those that love her across the sea. 

In the late ninth century, the Archbishop Sigebod was called to build a church in Barcelona and dedicate it to the city’s girl-saint Eulalia. At the instruction of the Archbishop, the Bishop Frodoinus and his clerics prayed and fasted and asked God to help them discover relics of the dead child, so that they might receive her blessings to begin the work. Sure enough, remains were discovered, bones long-buried on the side of the road leading out from the city. And it was around these bones that a marble tomb was built, and around that tomb a cathedral. Atop the tomb stands a stone Eulalia with a baby in her arms, the Christ Child himself, his tiny hands crowning her with a halo of stars. They’re flanked by angels, clutching candlesticks, watched over by the Holy Mother. Below them, encasing the bones of a long-dead teenage girl, are carvings, depictions of the events that led to Eulalia’s canonisation. 

Carmen and Sydney’s Eulalia explains this to her parents, voice low and quiet. They’re nestled close to either side of her. Her mother has her arm around Eulalia’s waist, her hand on Carmen’s elbow. There’s not a lot of room in the crypt. 

“When she was a little girl,” Eulalia says softly, “the Romans took over the city, and imposed their gods on the people of Barcelona. And the early Christians were persecuted, tortured and killed. And she couldn’t stand it. So there she is, telling her parents she’s leaving home. She had to do something. She went to the emperor, I forget his name.”

“Dacian,” Sydney says, “he was the judge of Merida.”

Eulalia glances at her mother out of the corner of her eye. She’s staring up at Saint Eulalia and the baby, eyes glimmering in the candlelight. When she meets Eulalia’s gaze, they both laugh a little. 

“Sorry,” Sydney says, clearing her throat, “carry on.” 

“Right. Yeah. That guy. Anyway, she went to him and he, uh, he didn’t listen. Obviously. He ordered her to be put to death with thirteen tortures, one for each year of her life. That’s why there’s thirteen geese in the yard.”

She looks over at her parents. They’re watching her, their faces warm in the candlelight.

“She was torn apart by hooks,” she says, “she was set on fire, rolled down the street in a barrel of knives. They crucified her. When she died, they cut her throat, and a dove flew out.”

For a long time, no one says anything. Sydney tilts her head gently, eventually coming to rest on her daughter’s shoulder. Carmen presses a kiss to Eulalia’s temple, strokes her head the way he used to when she was small. They watch the candles flicker and dance. 

“You wanna get something to eat?” Eulalia asks, and her parents laugh. 

Eulalia has to work on her parents’ last night in town. Well, she doesn’t have to, Paloma said she could have it off but she wants them to see her at work. She wants to cook for them, the way they’ve cooked for her. They’re invited to family, but Sydney says they can’t because she’s booked them tickets for the Montjuïc cable cars and it’s non-refundable. Eulalia thinks they might be trying to give her space but she doesn’t want space. She wants them to see her serving up spaghetti carbonara to the waitstaff and to catch her eye, proud and fond. Look, Mommy, she wants to say, look, Daddy, look what I can do. 

She’s so caught up in watching the door, waiting for her parents, that she doesn’t notice Oliver until she walks right into him while holding a tray of pa amb tomáquet. The slices go flying, crushed tomatoes streaking Eulalia’s whites with red. Oliver swears loudly, calls her a fucking idiot at the exact moment the door between front and back of house swings open, revealing Sydney and Carmen. That’s their first glimpse of their daughter in the kitchen she’s dedicating her twenties to. Getting cursed at by her boss. Who she’s sleeping with, although Carmen and Sydney don’t know that. She hopes they don’t know that. Eulalia wishes the earth would swallow her whole. She doesn’t want this. She’s nervous enough as it is with her parents in the restaurant and now Oliver’s here and he didn’t fucking tell her he was going to be back and she wrecks a roux and burns a duck breast and every five minutes the doors go and she gets a glimpse of her mom and dad’s heads bent together at their table. She feels sick. Her hands are trembling. When Gol, Sus’s goth replacement, their best server despite her vocal fry and penchant for purple lipstick, brings Sydney and Carmen’s ticket out, Eulalia’s vision blacks out at the edges. She knows before Oliver even opens his mouth to call the order what they’ve chosen - Sydney’s gone for esqueixada de bacallà, Carmen’s having cargols a la llauna, and they’ll have every side on the menu to share between them. Eulalia reaches underneath her station to get the cod from the ice box but her hands are shaking too much to open it. Paloma appears and looks at her, something like pity in her eyes. 

“Chef,” she says in a low, steady voice, “I would like to cook for your parents.” 

“I can do it,” Eulalia says, still scrambling around. Paloma shakes her head.

“No,” she says, “please don’t misunderstand me. I would like to cook for your parents. It would be a great privilege.”

Eulalia’s bottom lip begins to wobble and she’s got the urge to stamp her foot like a toddler who didn’t get her own way. Paloma‘s gaze is steady. Eulalia gives it up, hands the ice box over. 

“Go to them,” Paloma says, “we can manage.”

“Excuse me,” Sydney says, like she’s calling Eulalia over to get a drinks refill. “I just gotta talk to the sous chef at this place, I heard she’s the smartest, most talented, most beautiful girl in the whole wide world? You heard that, right, Carm?”

“Yeah, that’s what I heard.” 

“Well,” Eulalia says with a grimace, rising up on the balls of her feet, “you’re talking to her.” 

“No fucking way!” Sydney says, grinning. “Oh my God, you’re our daughter, right?”

“Pretty sure I am, yeah.”

Sydney beams up at her, pleased as punch. “You got time?” 

Eulalia nods, and Sydney shuffles over so Eulalia can sit beside her. She leans into Carmen in the way she always does, a hand on his chest and his arm around her shoulder. Looking at them together makes Eulalia feel kind of lonely. 

“This place is tight,” Sydney says, “very cool. Great lighting.”

“I can’t take credit for it,” Eulalia says, “it’s all Paloma.” 

“She good to you?” Carmen asks, voice low and face serious. 

Eulalia shrugs. “Yeah, she’s fine. She said it would be a great privilege to cook for you guys.”

Sydney laughs, briefly buries her face in her hands. “Doesn’t matter how long I’ve been doing this shit, that still feels so weird,” she says, and then she looks up, her eyebrows contracting with concern. “You want some water, baby? You look a little gray. Carm, can you get her some water please?”

“I’m fine,” Eulalia says, even though her stomach is churning and her heart is pounding and she’s not entirely sure why, “how were the cable cars?”

Sydney chortles with glee and gets her phone out as Carmen pours a glass of water and pushes it towards Eulalia.

“It was so much fun,” Sydney says, brandishing her phone in Eulalia’s face, “I thought it might be like, too cloudy to see anything, y’know, it’s January, but it was gorgeous. Gorgeous! You could see the whole city, and the sea, it was beautiful.”

She flicks through a series of photos of herself and Carmen with their arms around each other, the Barcelona skyline behind them. They look happy. Eulalia’s heart constricts in her chest.

“Can you send those to me?” 

“Sure,” Sydney says, “I really think you should have some water, baby. Don’t you think she looks gray, Carm?” 

“It’s the kitchen,” Eulalia says, “it’s the lights.”

Sydney makes a humming noise, and the doors to the kitchen swing open. It’s not Gol bearing dinner, but Oliver, in his stained whites, face red. Eulalia’s heart starts beating double-time.

“Chef,” he says, “the fuck are you doing out here?”

“Chef Paloma said - ”

“Oh, well, if Chef Paloma said - ” 

Eulalia wishes a meteor would hit the earth and kill them all instantly, to end this moment and ensure she never has to experience anything like this ever again. Oliver’s nostrils are flaring. Sydney clears her throat, and offers him her hand.

“I don’t think we’ve met,” she says, “Chef Sydney Adamu. Eulalia’s our daughter.” 

Oliver doesn’t shake Sydney’s hand. He’s staring at Eulalia, hands on his hips, lips pursed.

“Chef, why the fuck are you still sat there?” 

“Hey,” Carmen says, “watch your mouth.”

“And who the fuck are you?”

“I’m her fucking father, who the fuck are you?” 

“You’re her stepfather,” Oliver says, the corners of his lips curling into a sneer. Eulalia’s dizzy and she feels sick, like if she opens her mouth she’s going to vomit on the tablecloth.

“What the fuck is your problem, man?” Carmen says, and for a second Eulalia can see him the way he was when her mother met him, the vein in his neck throbbing and his face red with righteous rage. “I’m tryna enjoy a nice fucking dinner with my family. Get the fuck outta here.”

“We’re in the middle of service and Chef Eulalia - ” 

“Ollie,” Eulalia says, and he meets her eyes with a hard stare. “Ollie, please.” 

His nostrils flare again and Eulalia has the dim, faraway thought that she’s never realized how much he looks like a horse. He turns on his heel and storms back into the kitchen. As soon as he’s on the other side of the door, he’s yelling. Eulalia flinches. She’s just left there, with her parents, bloodless and cold. 

“Well,” Sydney says a little awkwardly, “that guy’s an asshole.”

“He’s not an asshole,” Eulalia says, “he’s my boyfriend.”

If her mother had been drinking at that moment, she would’ve done a spit-take. She splutters, nearly choking on air, and Carmen says what in this weird, strained voice Eulalia’s never heard before. 

“Are you fucking with me?” Sydney says. “Baby, please tell me you’re fucking with me.”

“He’s my boyfriend,” Eulalia says. Her parents exchange wide-eyed looks, and it pisses her off. 

“He must be what, like, forty?” says Sydney. “He’s your boss - ” 

“You are such a fucking hypocrite. Dad was your boss when you met.”

Sydney scoffs. “Barely, and that is completely different.”

“Why, because you married him? Because you had his babies? Who’s to say that’s not going to happen with me and Oliver?” 

“Don’t even joke about that,” Carmen says in that same strained voice. Eulalia glares at him. 

“I’m an adult,” she says, “I live in a foreign country, on my own, and I can date who I want, thank you.”

“Are you dating,” Sydney asks, “or are you just sleeping together?”

“Mom!”

“Does he take you out? Do you walk down the street holding hands? You go to the movies on your days off? The beach? If he’s your boyfriend, why have you literally never mentioned this before?”

“You don’t need to know every detail about my life,” Eulalia says. “You don’t even want to know every detail about my life. You don’t ever answer your phone!”

“You don’t ever answer your phone,” Sydney says, and her voice has got this dangerous timbre to it. “We are your parents.”  

Eulalia’s heart pounds in her chest, it feels like her ribcage is rattling. 

“I’m grown,” Eulalia says, “I don’t need any more parenting.” 

Sydney laughs, this horrible, cruel, scratchy sound. 

“All my life,” Eulalia says, voice trembling, “you fed me all this bullshit about how you two fell in love in the kitchen, how you collaborated on your menu and your family, and what, now I’m doing it, it’s a problem?”

Sydney’s face is stony and impenetrable, the way she gets when she’s really, really mad. 

“What collaboration, exactly, are you doing on this menu? What dishes did you work on together? What ingredients did you suggest?”

Eulalia’s face heats. “It’s not on this menu…”

Sydney scoffs again, and it stings Eulalia like a scratch. She can’t help herself; her mouth is burning, words tumbling out of her.

“At least I haven’t let some fucking rando knock me up and then never speak to me again,” she spits.

“That’s out of fucking line, Eulalia,” Carmen says, and he’s pointing at her like he’s fucking Brando or something, an Italian mobster, not her father. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, even though she’s not. Her mom’s not looking at her. Sydney’s eyes are fixed on the door of the restaurant. If she stood up and walked out right now, Eulalia wouldn’t blame her.

“Eulalia,” Carmen says, a little gentler, “you gotta - it’s like - a man who speaks to you like that - that’s not a man who loves you.” 

And this makes her crack up because really, her dad is one to fucking talk. 

“Oh, please,” she says, “where the fuck do you two get off? You told me that story about the tomato cans like it was Cinderella, and that literally hinges on you treating Mom so shittily she quit and - ”

“For which he apologized profusely,” Sydney says sharply, rounding on her daughter, “and I would say he’s more than made up for it in the last, oh, twenty-five years, wouldn’t you?”

Carmen’s jaw is tight and he’s staring at his hands.

“Oh, I’m sorry I’m not more grateful,” Eulalia spits, “I didn’t realize it was such a fucking hardship - would you two just fuck off back to Chicago to the kids you actually wanted, and leave me be?”

“Eulalia,” Carmen says, “that guy’s a fucking jerk, and if you can’t see that - ” 

“Fuck you,” Eulalia says, “you’re not my real fucking father. Fuck you, fuck off, fuck you!”

She stands up abruptly, the table scraping uglily across the hardwood floor. One of her parents tries to grab her hand but she shakes them off, needing to get out, get some air, she’s too hot and she can’t breathe and her skin feels too tight. She stumbles through the dining room, through the doors and into the fluorescents of the kitchen. 

“Chef?” Paloma says, and Eulalia bends over and retches in front of the whole staff. She shudders and shivers. She’s drooling. She’s pathetic. She feels a large hand on her back. Oliver. 

“Come on,” he says, voice low, “you’re embarrassing yourself.” 

He says something to Paloma in Catalan, Eulalia can barely hear it over the blood rushing in her ears. She straightens up, trembling, wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Oliver’s hand is still on her back. Like a child, she lets him lead her out the back door of the restaurant, down the alley, down the street, to his apartment, to his bed. 

When she wakes the next morning, she has a text from her mother that reads: got an earlier flight home. when you’re ready to talk let us know. we love you always. 

Chapter Text

In the months that follow, Eulalia spends more time in the kitchen than she ever has before in her entire life. She leaves Oliver asleep in her bed, and lets herself into Dulce. Her mother calls, and she says she’s busy. Her father calls, and she ignores it. She can’t think about them. She can’t think about her sisters, she can’t think about her baby brother, her Pop and her Abuela. The only thing that’s real is the heat of the kitchen, the sizzle of garlic in a pan, the hiss of oil and yes, chef. She slices and dices, grates until her knuckles bleed. She wants something for herself. And she’s going to get it.

In the sleepy, syrupy summer, the contract on her apartment needs renewing. They’re putting the rent up by five percent. She can’t afford it.

“Get some flatmates,” Oliver suggests one night over post-service doner kebabs, “those waitresses are always looking for somewhere to live. The giggly ones.” 

Eulalia raises an eyebrow at him. “They’re students, they’re babies. I’m never there anyway. Why don’t I just move in here?” 

It’s Oliver’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “But you like your space,” he says, “and I like mine.” 

“But think how nice it would be,” Eulalia says, pouting, “to come home to me. And I’d pay rent, and I’d cook and I’d clean and I’d never wear clothes to bed.” 

She smiles at him and bats her eyelashes and he laughs and takes her in his arms.

“Alright,” he says, “you win.” 

It doesn’t feel like much of a victory. Oliver is away a lot. And he never liked to talk in the first place but after she moves in, after her last box of cookbooks has been dumped in a corner of the living room, he likes to talk even less. He’s always on the phone. Eulalia thinks he might have money troubles, especially now that she’s seen his bills, but it seems impolite to ask. She keeps him fed and watered and the apartment clean and she goes to him whenever he reaches for her. What else can she do? 

Sydney’s ollada with jollof rice makes the menu. Eulalia sends her a text message about it, but when her mom calls, she hangs up. Thinking about her parents makes her cold all over. She and Oliver never talk about what happened when they came to stay. She’s stopped asking him about his parents. He’ll tell her if he wants to. 

Paloma is so proud of her. A French bistro opens up across town and Paloma takes Eulalia with her to the opening, holds onto her arm for the whole evening and introduces her to people as my protege, the saint in our house. They bump into Daphne and her double-stroller on the way to the tram home. Her children are sleeping, and they’re beautiful. Daphne is happy, and that makes Eulalia happy. 

“Do you think that could be you one day?” Paloma asks her as they watch Daphne disappear into the distance. 

“Mmm,” Eulalia hums, light and airy after two glasses of white wine and a night of everyone telling her how talented she is. “I don’t know. I don’t think Ollie wants kids.” 

Paloma’s face falls like Rome. Eulalia knows instantly she’s said something wrong, but then Paloma does that thing Sydney does, she goes somewhere, her expression stony. 

“It doesn’t matter what any man wants,” Paloma says, “it matters what you want.” 

When Oliver is away, Paloma asks Eulalia to call the tickets. They hire a new line cook. Eulalia starts smoking without a drink in her hand. Her sisters send her memes, and she responds with the thumbs up emoji. Oliver is dead broke. But that’s okay, really it is. Eulalia can cover the electric. She’s got money for the water bill. She doesn’t go anywhere, she doesn’t do anything. She only exists for him. 

“We should go somewhere else,” Eulalia whispers to him in the heat of the night, “just get out of here. The two of us.”

“Like on holiday?” Oliver mumbles into her neck. 

“No, like, forever. Like, we go somewhere, get our own spot. Me and you.”

“Hm. Yeah. French.”

“Yeah, or - or, like, fusion? Like West African, European fusion?” 

“No,” he pulls away from her, rubs dust from his eyes, “no, it needs to be classy. Chic and elevated.” 

“Are you saying my jollof isn’t classy?” Eulalia says, a laugh in her voice that she doesn’t feel. Oliver rolls his eyes. 

“You know what I mean,” he says. 

“Yeah. Sorry.”

He sighs, and lies back down. Eulalia rests her head on his shoulder. 

“Restaurants cost money, Eulalia,” he says. 

“We could… we could use the money I got when my Nonna died. It’s not doing anything, it’s just kind of sitting there.” 

She holds her breath. She feels weird about the inheritance, bequeathed to her by a woman who didn’t love her. It’s dirty, somehow. Donna was an inconsistent presence in her childhood, alternating between overbearing and cold. She made Sydney cry once, one Christmas when Bea was a baby. Eulalia always felt her lack of true Berzattoness most keenly when Donna was around. She couldn’t believe it when Uncle Jimmy’s lawyer sat her down and told her there was cash set aside for her. 

Oliver sniffs. “I don’t know, man,” he says. 

“I want it,” Eulalia says, “don’t you understand? I want everything with you.” 

He says nothing, and opens his arms.

Eulalia starts doodling menu ideas in a notebook. Fried plantain and fennel, jollof rice and ollada. Raspberry risotto. Oliver’s in London three weeks out of four. When he’s at Dulce, he and Paloma ignore each other, which is somehow worse than when they were fighting all the time. Eulalia really likes the guy they hired as a line cook - his name’s Fernando, and he’s funny and generous and really good at searing duck. Oliver doesn’t like him. Oliver doesn’t like anyone, really. Sometimes Eulalia’s not even sure he likes her. 

She has this dream, sometimes, of a monochrome restaurant with a sleek black bar, and a fire pit right in the middle of the dining room. It’s an open kitchen too, and she’s trying to get to it, but the chairs are in the way. She keeps tripping over them, smashing her hips against the sharp corners of the tables. She calls for Ollie, she knows he’s there, but he never comes. She wakes up drenched in sweat. 

On a Wednesday in June, he texts her. I found the perfect spot. She’s smoking out back with Fernando and her hands start to tremble as she replies. 

What?! Where?! Send pics pls 

It’s in north London, just down the street from uncle Luca’s beloved Arsenal. He tells her the address, but sends no pictures. 

Deposit’s 5k, he writes, u still got that money from ur gran? 

He doesn’t have to ask twice. She empties her savings account, empties her checking account, and walks home from Dulce at two o’clock in the morning instead of taking the tram. 

He calls. He got it. 

“I’m not coming back,” he tells her, “there’s too much to do here.” 

“What? Have you told Paloma - what about the apartment? What about all your stuff?” 

“I don’t know,” he says, “you can figure it out, can’t you?”  

Eulalia can’t cover the rent by herself. She boxes up all their stuff, their cookbooks and their pans, and she keeps them in Dulce’s office, because the storage place was charging like, two hundred Euro a week. She sleeps on Daphne’s couch, on Hildy’s, on Fernando’s. She can’t bring herself to ask Paloma for anything. 

The night she sleeps at Fernando’s, Oliver FaceTimes her.

“I miss you,” he slurs, stumbling down a dark London street. “I miss your crazy hair.”

“My hair’s not crazy,” she says, “you don’t have to miss me, you just say the word and I’ll jump on the first plane to London.” 

“No,” he says, “no. I don’t want - you’re so… what are you wearing?” 

“Ollie,” she laughs, “shut up, I’m at Fernando’s.” 

Oliver snorts. “That prick,” he says, “you know he wants to fuck you, don’t you?” 

Eulalia bristles. “Fernando is my friend,” she says, “and you’re drunk. Call me tomorrow.”

“Don’t hang up on me, Eulalia,” he says, and his voice is so loud she turns the volume down on her phone, “don’t let him fuck you.” 

“Shut up,” she hisses, “it’s not like that. Will you - just text me when you get home, alright?” 

“Promise me you won’t - promise me you won’t - don’t get into his bed.”

“Ollie, be serious.”

“I am serious,” he mumbles, and the image on her phone screen wobbles and shakes in his unsteady hand. “He wants you - everyone wants you - I’m the only one who gets to have you. I’m the only one.” 

He’s never spoken to her like this before. In the dark of Fernando’s front room, she feels sick. It should feel good, right, it should feel like a compliment, that he wants her this much, that he’s thinking of her. But it just makes her feel ill. 

“I have to go,” she says, and then she hangs up before he can protest. 

She doesn’t sleep. Tears prickle her eyelids, but she doesn’t shed them. 

June gives way to July, and her mother’s birthday. She sends a text, clipped and matter-of-fact as though Sydney were a work colleague. In the group chat, Emmy posts pictures of the mountain of gifts, the spread of food, Sydney in her bonnet and pajamas, beaming. Eulalia vomits in the alley. 

In midsummer, service runs as smooth as a hot knife through butter. Eulalia’s got plans to get drinks with Fernando and the girls who work front of house after. Paloma pats her on the shoulder and says: “Great work tonight, Chef.” 

She’s floating on air, she’s on cloud freaking nine. And out in the street, waiting for her with his hands in his pockets, is Oliver. She squeals and throws herself into his arms, aware that he’ll chide her for embarrassing him later, but too happy to see him to care.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” she says, kissing his face. He pulls her off him.

“Would you relax?” he says. “I was in London, not Vietnam.” 

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, grinning at him. “You should’ve called me!” 

“It was a last minute thing,” he says, “I’ve got some things to do while I’m here but I - you doing anything right now?” 

Fernando and the waitstaff are hovering ahead of them. Fernando’s got a cigarette on the go, framed in the moonlight like an old Hollywood movie star. 

“You coming?” he calls. Eulalia shakes her head, curls bobbing. 

“Not tonight,” she says, “have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t!”

And they laugh, because Eulalia doesn’t do anything, ever. 

Oliver’s staying in an apartment complex near the center of the city, it’s bougie as fuck. It’s where actors stay when they’re filming - Saoirse Ronan just moved out of it. It looks lived in, he’s got sneakers strewn all over the floor. She pauses in the doorway, a little baffled by it all. 

“You hungry?” Oliver asks. 

She is. He’s got a lamb roasting and she watches him stir red wine sauce. He’s moving slowly, surely, like he can feel her eyes on him. Like he’s showing off. She kind of likes it. Is this what it’s going to be like when they live in London? No cold, quiet sandwiches, just sunlight and the sizzle of the skillet? 

“Where are you staying in London?” she asks.

“With friends,” he says, “you don’t have to worry about me. You want a drink?”

“I do worry about you,” she says, “how’s the restaurant looking? You got pictures? I was thinking, right, about the tasting menu, about doing like, an ingredient of the week, and everything  - ” 

“Eulalia,” he says, and he sounds tired. “I don’t want to talk about the fucking restaurant.” 

“Oh. What… do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. Anything else. Seen any good films lately?” 

“No,” she says, “I don’t watch movies without you. I don’t - I don’t do anything without you, I don’t - I wanna be with you all the time.” 

“Hm,” Ollie hums, “chop the parsley?” 

“Yes, chef,” she says, without thinking about it. The knives in this place are kind of crap. She wonders where his chef’s knives are. 

“Listen, Eulalia, about that,” he clears his throat, “I think, uh, we’ve been having a lot of fun together, right?”

“Right,” she says, and his knife feels heavy in her hand.

“But when the restaurant opens, I’ll need to get serious - ” 

Eulalia starts to tremble, it starts in her knees and then creeps up her body and she puts the knife down with a clatter. Fuck if she’s losing a finger tonight. 

“I thought we were serious,” she says, “I’m serious about you.” 

“And I love that about you,” he says, “but I’m talking about me.”

“What are you - we’re going to be working together, we’re going to be running a restaurant together, what are you - ?”

“What? I thought you were happy here.” 

“What?”

“Eulalia, it’s…” he took the lamb off the heat, and turned to face her, his face set serious. “You know the restaurant is mine, don’t you?” 

Everything inside her shrinks rapidly. She’s shriveling up. “But I,” she hears a little voice that doesn’t sound like her own saying, “but the deposit…”

“I know, and I’m so grateful. But that wasn’t - you’re not ready for a spot of your own.”

She won’t cry. She is desperate not to cry. It’s a losing battle - a salty tear drops off the end of her nose and lands on the parsley with a splash. “I don’t understand,” she says, “are you - you’re doing it without me?” 

“Eulalia,” Oliver sighs and puts his hands on her shoulders, “don’t ruin tonight, please? Let’s just have tonight.” 

What’s sick is the thought that’s loudest in her head, what’s pressing against her brain, is: I want my mom and dad. She wants to crumple and cry. But she can’t. It’s so fucking embarrassing. She’s been so much trouble to them, all her life. She doesn’t want to be any more. 

“Alright,” she says, sniffling, “alright, sorry. I was just a little confused. You, um, you want me to check on the lamb?” 

He smiles at her, but it’s so patronizing it turns her stomach. The fuck is she supposed to do? At least the food is good. At least there’s that.

They go to bed together, and when she wakes up in the morning, he’s gone. She lies there for hours, staring at the crack in the ceiling. Her uncle Richie always used to say this bullshit thing about how there's a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. She thinks Bob Dylan might’ve said it, maybe. Or Leonard Cohen. One of those guys. Anyway - they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. There’s no light coming in here. She feels like she’s fucking bleeding out, like she’s going to die, naked in a glorified Air BnB. When her great-grandmother left Nigeria, is this what she dreamt of? Most probably fucking not. 

When Eulalia gets hungry, she checks her phone. She’s late for work. Fuck work. What the hell does she want to go to work for? She wants Oliver. She wants Oliver and her own spot and to stop feeling sick when she thinks about her parents. How much money does she have in the bank right now? How much is a flight to London? 

It’s raining in Islington. She got lost on the Tube, ended up wandering around Bank station trying to find signal, her suitcase banging against her ankles. All she’s got is an address and her will. She can’t go back. You can’t ever go back, you can only go forwards. To whatever the fuck is on the other side of today. 

It’s dark and drizzling and frankly, north London looks real shitty like this. The restaurant is on a long road, full of Irish pubs and Italian places and kebab houses and Jamaican spots. She’s not eaten since yesterday. She’s just been guzzling Coke like it’s going out of fashion, which probably isn’t helping her nausea at all. Paloma keeps calling her, and she’s letting it ring out. Every step sounds like his name. She steps in a puddle, soaks her shoes. 

The restaurant is on a corner, a children’s play park across the street. It’s got a dark green awning, rickety tables and chairs out front, empty because of the rain. It doesn’t look like a fucking building site. It doesn’t look like a fixer-upper. It looks pretty fucking fixed from where Eulalia’s standing. The windows are warm and golden, a little steamed up because the place is packed out. There’s music playing, something folksy she doesn’t recognise. This can’t be right. Surely, this cannot be right. 

As she approaches, she spots a little framed menu on the wall, underneath a blue plaque that says some guy lived here in the eighteen hundreds, like Eulalia gives a shit. 

Fucking plantain and fennel, she’s going to kill him. Her head’s so hot she almost doesn’t see the second frame, a cutting from a local newspaper.

Happy homecoming for Michelin star chefs. 

Chefs, plural? As in more than one? Bile rises in her throat as she keeps reading. 

Islington’s own Oliver Brandon is returning to his home borough this month, opening a fusion restaurant with his wife, fellow Michelin starred chef Lola Verges Andreu. 

Eulalia’s going to vomit in the street, she’s going to throw up, there’s no fucking way - 

Brandon and Verges Andreu share a culinary past. They met twenty years ago, when Brandon was a pot washer at a restaurant run by Verges Andreu’s mother, Paloma Andreu. 

Eulalia spits yellow into the gutter. 

The door of the restaurant - she doesn’t even know what it’s fucking called, she can’t read, she can’t see - opens and a happy looking couple stumble out, arm in arm. This is a fucking date night spot. Her blood is boiling, bubbling over, she can’t feel the rain on her face anymore. 

The hostess is a sweet, smiling girl. Young, white with curly red hair and big green eyes. Eulalia thinks she looks kind. What a shame.

“Good evening,” she says, “do you have a booking with us tonight?” 

“I need to speak to Chef Brandon,” Eulalia says, “please.” 

“Okay,” the hostess trills, “well, Chef Brandon’s a little busy at the moment, as we are in the middle of service, but if you’d like to take off your coat, maybe my colleague can get you a drink - ”

“Tell him I’m pregnant,” Eulalia says, “and it’s his baby.” 

The sweet hostess’s face falls. She doesn’t, however, look like this is a regular occurrence. Small mercies, Eulalia supposes. 

“Wait here,” the girl says. 

When Oliver comes out of the kitchen - closed kitchen, probably so he can yell at the staff to his heart’s content, the bastard - every eye in the place follows him. The blood drains from his face when he spots Eulalia. Good. 

“Is it true?” he asks her in the street. He’s in his whites, and he’s shivering. 

“What?” 

“Are you pregnant?” 

Eulalia laughs. When her mom’s really mad she laughs. “No,” she says, “I’m not fucking pregnant - although, y’know, I could be, and you’re fucking married, you absolute scumsucking, lying, asshole, piece of shit!” 

“Eulalia, it’s not - it’s complicated, okay, we haven’t been in a good place - ” 

He approaches her with his hands raised like he’s surrendering. 

“You cheated on your boss’s daughter with a member of staff, are you fucking stupid?”

“My relationship with Paloma is complicated, I - ” 

“Fuck off and die!” Eulalia yells. Oliver does a double take, as if he can’t believe she’s talking to him. 

“I want my fucking money,” she says, “and I want you to fuck off, and I want you to die.” 

“Eulalia,” he says, “don’t be like this. Don’t ruin what we - ”  

“Ruin what, what we had?” She’s yelling, her face feels like it’s going to explode, snot’s running into her mouth. “What did we have, exactly? Fucking - I was your side piece. Oh my God. You’re the scum of the fucking earth - is your wife in there? Does she know you used your little girlfriend’s money to buy her a restaurant?” 

“Eulalia,” he says, “that money was, was the kindest thing anyone  - ” 

“Fuck off and die twice!” 

“If you’d just stop yelling and let me fucking explain myself - ” 

“Go right afuckinghead,” she snaps, “I’m not stopping you!”

He puts his face in his hands and sighs. “We were very young,” he says, “and very stupid. And it was very complicated. I don’t expect you to understand.” 

“Why, because I’m so young, oh, poor naive Eulalia doesn’t understand the complexities and intricacies of the adult fucking world, boohoo, guess we’ll have to teach her - did Paloma know you were sleeping with me?” 

He blanches a little. “Not… exactly but - listen, Lola and I have been business partners for a long time, and when the last place shut down, we thought it was a good idea for me to take a break, and - ” 

“What about my money?” 

“Eulalia, please.” 

She looks him right in the eye and is struck by a wave of repulsion so visceral she nearly blacks out. He’s pathetic. What a fucking loser. 

“I’ll pay you back,” he says, “please don’t tell Lola.” 

And Eulalia does what most Berzattos would do in her situation. She picks up a rickety chair, and she throws it at the front window of the stupid fucking restaurant. And then she runs.

She runs and she runs until she can’t hear Oliver yelling, until she can’t hear the blare of the alarm, until she can’t breathe and her feet ache and she’s sobbing, great gasping sobs that shake her whole body. She doesn’t even know where she is. Oh - yes, she does. She’s been here before. With her uncle Luca. The arch of the stadium looms above her, this is where uncle Luca’s Arsenal play. There’s a statue of Bukayo Saka a little ahead of her, and she stumbles towards it, panting, and sits by his feet. Her hands are trembling as she gets her phone out. She presses the first contact in her phone book with a shaky thumb. It doesn’t even ring twice.

“Yo,” says Carmen, and she sobs harder and harder. Relief floods her body, she’s woozy with it. “Yo, Eulalia, baby, is that you? You okay? Are you - shit, Syd? Syd! Eulalia’s on the phone. Honey, are you - has someone - Syd, I think she’s crying - ” 

“Daddy,” Eulalia hiccups, “Daddy, it’s me. Can you come get me please?” 

Chapter Text

The first thing Eulalia does when she gets back to Chicago is sleep for sixteen hours straight. When she wakes, her father is hovering in the doorway of her bedroom, clutching a tray laden with soup and grilled cheese. He sits on the edge of her bed and watches her nibble on the sandwich.

“You wanna talk about it?” Carmen asks. 

“No,” Eulalia says, and then she bursts into tears. 

The days slide into each other. She can’t taste anything. She sleeps in fits and starts. Her parents try to coax her out of bed by making the old favorites - braciole, cola braised short ribs and raspberry risotto, pot au feu - but it does nothing. It feels like dust in her mouth. It’s not enough that Oliver has humiliated her, robbed her blind and broken her heart, he had to take this from her too. She gets her period and is so relieved she throws up. Paloma sends her a lengthy email, which she does not read. The sun rises and sets and everyone whispers on the threshold of Eulalia’s bedroom like she’s an invalid. Eva comes over on her day off and they watch twenty-three episodes of Bob’s Burgers in silence, save for the occasional interruption from Beatrice asking if anyone wants any pop. Later, the baby - who is not a baby anymore - slides a watercolor of four brown bears frolicking by a river under her door. He signs it: love, your brother Carmen. 

One evening, or maybe it’s morning, she can’t tell anymore, the sound of her parents’ murmurs pull her up into consciousness, like swimming to the surface of the sea. 

“She looks so cute,” her mother is saying, “do you remember when she was little and she used to sleep at the foot of our bed? Like a weird dog.”

“Mmm,” her father hums. There’s the familiar muffled movement that means Carmen has kissed Sydney. “I remember getting kicked in the face like, every night.”

Sydney laughs. The bed dips as Carmen and Sydney sit either side of Eulalia. Her mother’s hands, slender and calloused, stroke the curls of her hair, loose from her scarf. She can’t open her eyes yet, she’s still underwater. Sydney sighs. 

“Eulalia,” she says, “baby, wake up.”

Eulalia moans, head rushing. “Stop watching me sleep, freaks.”

“But you’re so cute!” Sydney says. “C’mon, baby, we wanna talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Eulalia grumbles, “I just want to sleep.”

She cracks open one eye and catches her parents exchanging a look of frustration. She blinks, her eyes adjusting to the light. Her mother still has one of her ringlets wrapped around her finger. 

“You wanna do something today?” Carmen asks her. Eulalia groans. Getting out of bed sounds like hell. Her bones ache. 

“I feel sick,” she says, and her father nods. 

“I know, honey.” He takes her hand in his, smoothes it like he used to when she was small. Her mom rests her head on the pillow beside her. 

“You thought about what happens next?” she whispers. Eulalia screws her face up. The future is like staring down the barrel of a gun. She wanted things, and now she’s never going to get them. Her stomach twists and burns.

“I can’t,” she says, “I’m so embarrassed - I just feel so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” says Carmen, low and soothing. 

“Like, so fucking far from it,” Sydney agrees, “you fell down, baby. It happens.”

“Well, it shouldn’t.”

Her mother laughs hard. “Oh, ain’t that the truth.”

“You warned me and I just fucking - I’m sorry,” she says, voice claggy with unshed tears, “I’m really sorry. I was so horrible. I can’t believe you’ve even let me in your house.”

“Eulalia,” Sydney says, “I want you to listen to me when I say this. There is nothing in this world that you could possibly do or say that’s going to stop us from loving you.”

“You can always come home,” Carmen says. “We’re always gonna be here. You understand?” 

Tears drip down Eulalia’s nose. “I understand. But I really am so sorry. I just - I’m a fucking idiot.” 

Carmen squeezes her hand gently, and Sydney rests her forehead against Eulalia’s. “Sometimes,” she whispers, “the absolute worst thing in the world happens. For no reason at all. I’ve been there. Your daddy has too. But you just gotta keep going and then, one day….”

She trails off with a gentle sigh. The lines of her face, the signs of her well-lived life, smooth out. Eulalia presses her forehead harder against her mother’s and wishes she was a better daughter. 

“What?”

“You’re okay again,” Sydney says softly.

“How?”

“Come out for lunch with us,” Carmen says, “we’ll work it out.”

For several heartbeats, Eulalia does nothing. She just lies there and lets the pain and humiliation roll through her body like a fever. She has this memory of being little, maybe four or five, it was before Emmy and Bea were born, and she got sick, really sick. It was like a storm, like waves crashing over her. It was the first time in her life that she thought: I’m going to die, I’m going to die like the first Eulalia, like Uncle Mikey. Her skin burned and her head ached and she thrashed and sobbed and sweated and then: it was over. She was cool and quiet. The sun filtered in through the curtains and her mom and dad were there, holding her hands.

They go to this place by the river called Trio - it’s been open a while, maybe a year, but it’s new to Eulalia. Chicago feels different, meaner and colder. She sits with her parents at a table by the window and stares at the menu with unfocused eyes. They talk over the top of her head, like they used to do when she was a baby. 

“You wanna split the arancini?” her mother asks. 

Carmen nods. “All-day sandwich?”

“Sure, and fries.”

“Sweet potato?”

“You know it. Eulalia, you wanna get the kati rolls?”

“Huh?” She’s so out of it, adrift in her own misery, that she barely registers Sydney speaking to her. 

“Kati rolls,” Sydney says, “I think you’d like ‘em.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.”

Her dad puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and she leans into his touch. She’s kind of dreading this - when was the last time she enjoyed a meal? That fucking lamb Oliver made her on their last night in Barcelona, probably. The thought turns her stomach and she takes a shaky swig of water. 

“You good, baby?” Sydney asks, concerned.

“Yeah,” she says, “no. I don’t know. Can we - ” she shudders, and her dad moves his hand to her back to steady her. “I don’t know if I can eat anything, but - but it’s nice being here, really, it is, you can keep talking. I missed this.”

“You want a ginger ale or something?” Carmen says. She shakes her head.

“No, no, it’s alright. Um, have you guys been here before?”

Carmen and Sydney exchange a look, one of their indecipherable, twenty years of marriage looks. 

“We know the sous,” Sydney says with a shrug. 

“One of your little projects?” Eulalia asks her dad. 

“Something like that.” 

Sydney goes up to order at the bar and gets recognised by the teenager working the till. Carmen and Eulalia watch them take an awkward picture together and giggle into their hands. When Sydney comes hurrying back to the table with another round of drinks - and a ginger ale for Eulalia, despite her protests - she pulls a face, an exaggerated grimace, and they laugh harder. 

“I hate that so freaking much,” she says, clambering back onto her seat. “The other day, Emmy text me that she was out for dinner with friends, and not one person interrupted their meal to ask for a selfie, she was like, it’s so refreshing! I’m like, God, I wish that was me.” 

Eulalia guffaws. “She enjoying school?” 

“Oh, yeah,” Sydney takes a glug of her iced tea, “she fucking loves it. I don’t know how much actual school she’s doing but she sure as shit seems to love New York.” 

“Maybe you should go and see her,” Carmen suggests gently, “when you’re feeling better. She’s missed you.” 

When Eulalia left Chicago, Emmy was an awkward tween with knobbly knees and braces. She’s nineteen now, she’s got a buzzcut and a sleeve of tattoos. Eulalia doesn’t know who that person is. But she’d like to find out. 

“Yeah,” she says, “I think that’d be nice.” 

The ginger ale settles her stomach and the presence of her parents, warm and solid on either side of her, settles her mind. She’s able to actually take in the restaurant and the menu and the vibe. It’s nice, it’s got mid-century modern furniture and framed movie posters (John Hughes joints, naturally) on the wall. She likes it. Oliver would hate it. The thought gives her kind of a kick. She sips her drink and listens to her parents talk about Bea’s college applications and the baby’s art classes. It occurs to her that her parents actually like each other, like, as people. Every silence that falls between them is companionable, every tease is good-natured and met with laughter. When the food arrives, plates steaming, they split it like they said they would. Her dad always gives her mom the bigger half of the sandwich.

The kati rolls are huge, made from sweet rotis and stuffed with chicken and peppers and mango and paneer. There’s something familiar about the flavors, the coconut and cumin. It’s heat and it’s comfort and it makes her feel alive, properly alive. She’s flesh and bone and muscle and she’s so glad she didn’t die. 

Eulalia tears through all three rolls with the ferocity of a woman starved. Her face is smeared with sauce and she drops chicken on her shirt and she doesn’t care. Carmen and Sydney watch her with bemusement and fondness and a tiny hint of concern. 

“You okay there?” Sydney says when Eulalia finally stops for breath and to chug ice water. 

“Uh-huh,” she says, “this is - I haven’t - guys, I don’t know if you know this, but food is really fucking good.”

Her parents burst out laughing, their shoulders shaking in unison. 

“Oh, baby,” Sydney says, “I’m so happy you’re home.”

Eulalia wipes her face with a napkin, dabs at her shirt. “Who the fuck made that?” she says. A waitress is passing, notepad in hand, and Eulalia grabs her.

“Hey,” she says, “hi, this is so great, thank you. Could you please tell whoever made the kati rolls that they changed my life? Thank you.”

“Tell me yourself,” comes a well-loved, well-known voice. Eulalia spins around in her seat - Jyoti, standing there beaming in chef’s whites. She lets out a screech and nearly falls off her stool in desperation to get to her. Jyoti, here, in Chicago, Jyoti, cooking the most gorgeous food she’s ever eaten, Jyoti, in front of her, in the flesh, no longer a tiny square on a screen or a voice on the phone.  

“You dick!” Eulalia says, squeezing her tight. “You didn’t tell me you were working here!”

“Well, you’ve been a little busy,” Jyoti laughs. “You like the kati rolls?”

“Fucking fire, chef, seriously. Wait - is this the sous you guys know?” Eulalia turns to her parents, arms still locked around Jyoti like she’s scared she’ll run off if she lets her go. Sydney’s smiling. 

“Well, yeah,” she says. “This place is run by a friend of ours, we hooked Jyoti up.”

“Basically got me the gig,” Jyoti says. “This nepotism shit rules, I gotta say.”

They all laugh. Eulalia feels lighter than she has in weeks, giddy with glee. She finally lets Jyoti go, and they stand there, grinning at each other. 

“You got time?” Carmen asks.

“Yeah, I got five,” Jyoti says. “How’s the arancini?”

“It’s terrific, chef, that tarragon in there?”

“Yeah, we grow it out back. Vegetables too.”

“That’s cool,” Sydney says. “I always wanted to do something like that at Ife.”

Carmen’s hand finds hers in the space where Eulalia was sitting, interlinking their fingers. “Maybe at our next spot?” 

Sydney’s smile widens. “Yeah,” she says, “maybe.”

“You want the tour?” Jyoti asks Eulalia. “You know Dana, right?”

In all honesty, Eulalia doesn’t remember Dana. Her childhood had been filled with chefs of varying talents and specialities, all of whom would coo the last time I saw you, you were this big at her. She glances over at her mom and raises her eyebrows. Sydney nods knowingly.

“Uh, sous chef at La Flambé,” she says, “you had moussaka.” 

“Got you,” says Eulalia, a vague memory of a late night in Andersonville and tender, smoky eggplants floating to the forefront of her mind. “Alright, I wanna see this garden.” 

“Mr and Mrs A-B?” Jyoti asks. “You coming?” 

Sydney laughs. “I’m still working on this sandwich,” she says. “We’ll catch you up.”

Among the herbs, it’s easy to tell Jyoti everything. She listens attentively, gasps when she’s supposed to and laughs when Eulalia cracks a joke. 

“Oh, ‘lia,” she says once Eulalia has reached the end of her pathetic tale, “you’ve really been going the fuck through it, huh?”

“Yeah,” Eulalia says, and then she laughs. The sun is shining and she’s with Jyoti. She feels better than she has in a long time. 

“So what’s next?” Jyoti asks.

“I don’t know,” Eulalia shrugs. “Start again, somewhere, somehow. The nice thing about hitting rock fucking bottom is there’s nowhere left to fall.” 

Jyoti hums and strokes the basil plant. She’s got her thinking face on. Eulalia breathes deeply, lifts her face up into the summer rays. 

“You want me to put in a word with Dana?” 

Eulalia opens her eyes. Jyoti looks kind of nervous, bottom lip between her teeth, squinting in the sun. They’ve never cooked together before, not professionally anyway. The winter evenings they spent fermenting jelly and trying to see who could make the thinnest crepe feel far away now, like they happened to another person. It could go horribly wrong. Jyoti might be the kind of chef who yells, who calls names, who won’t make room for human error. Eulalia kind of doubts it though. 

“Yeah,” she says, grinning. “I’d like that. That’d be cool. I’m your nepotism baby.” 

Jyoti laughs. 

The week before she’s due to start at Trio, Eulalia flies to New York and spends three days and four nights sleeping on the floor of Emmy’s crappy college dorm room. She’s never had a spring in New York before - she left the CIA before the leaves came back to the trees. It’s nice. The air is crisp and fresh and Emmy Rose is thriving. She’s got so many friends, they can barely step out of the building without someone hailing her, asking her what she’s up to, what she’s working on, if she’ll come to this show or that party. And Emmy just laughs their mother’s laugh and makes no promises. She sits on the floor of her door room between Eulalia’s knees and her sister slathers her head in hair dye. It’s supposed to be pink but it comes out peachy. Eulalia starts to apologize for it, but Emmy cuts her off. She loves it, she takes fifty selfies and sends them all to the family group chat. Eulalia learns that her sister’s more relaxed than she is. Funnier too. When something goes wrong, when they miss the train or the spot they wanted to get dinner at is unexpectedly closed, it throws Eulalia off entirely. Whatever they do after, she can’t enjoy it. But Emmy just laughs and laughs. Eulalia wonders if it’s an older sibling thing, or what.

“Nah, I don’t think so,” Emmy says. They’re wandering through Manhattan arm-in-arm, matching cones in hand. When the girl in the store asked them what they wanted, they’d said raspberry sorbet in unison, and then laughed about it. The girl had asked them if they were sisters, and that just made them laugh more. 

“You know what I think it is?” Emmy says through a mouthful of sorbet. “I think it’s because, like, you were a stressed out little baby.”

“How’d you mean?”

“So, you know how, like, in child development, they’re like, the things that happen to you in the first year of your life affect your brain chemistry?”

Eulalia laughs. “Are you studying child development? I’m sorry, I thought you were in fashion? Do I have a Black Woman in STEM in my midst?”

“Shut up,” Emmy snorts, “I think Bea told me, she read it in some book, I don’t know. I think, like, because, when you were born, Mom was broke and whatever, you probably, like, picked up on that.”

Eulalia’s skin prickles with something she can’t name. She pulls her arm out from Emmy’s. “Great,” she says, “so I’m just doomed to be a nervous wreck my whole life because Mom was like, twelve when she had me?”

“Twenty-four is not twelve, Eulalia,” Emmy says, snippy. “I don’t think anyone’s ever doomed to be anything. You just gotta chill out.”

Eulalia guffaws. “Okay, Em,” she says, “I’ll do that.”

“I mean, I’m not saying that’s the only reason. Like, look at the baby, he was born when Mom and Dad were at the top of their game, and he’s like, the biggest worrier. We might just be genetically predisposed to it. But I don’t know, I think you gotta stop, like, worshiping problems. Go with the flow.”

Eulalia takes a big mouthful of sorbet and considers this. She’s never gone with the flow ever in her life, not once. Living feels like the most serious undertaking there is. Emmy skips ahead of her a little, her curls and clothes a bright contrast against the large, stone buildings they’re surrounded by. 

“Hey,” Eulalia says, “you know where we are?”

“I don’t know,” Emmy looks around her, “Madison Park?”

“That used to be EMP,” Eulalia says, nodding ahead of her at an austere gray building. It stopped being a restaurant long ago, she knows. It’s offices now. Some financial services company took it over. 

“Holy shit,” Emmy laughs, cranes her neck to try and see inside. “Let’s take a picture for Dad.”

“I don’t know,” Eulalia chews on her bottom lip, “it’s not like he loved it here…” 

But Emmy’s already got her phone out and an arm outstretched towards her sister. Eulalia goes to her and they grin up at the camera, the famous Art Deco doors behind them. And then they laugh, and Emmy flips the building off, like the bricks themselves wronged Carmen all those years ago. She takes a picture of that too. 

“We shouldn’t be too harsh, I guess,” Emmy says, the end of her ice cream cone between her teeth. “If it wasn’t for that place, none of us would have ever been born.”

Eulalia screws her nose up. “Uh, speak for yourself,” she says, “I’m pretty sure I owe my existence to the Dave and Buster’s on the North Side.”

Emmy shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Because it’s like this, right? If Sydney’d never eaten here, she never would’ve gotten inspired enough to do her own thing, so she never would’ve met that guy, and she never would’ve had you.”

“Huh,” Eulalia says, “I never really thought about it like that before.”

They wander away from the building, nowhere to be in a hurry. Eulalia glances back, and sees the thin golden thread that ties them all to each other glimmering in the spring sun. 

Later, when she and Emmy are splitting a pizza at a mom-and-pop spot in Brooklyn, they get a text from their mother in response to the pictures of them at Eleven Madison Park. Nice one, the message reads, Carmy’s crying. It’s accompanied by an image of their father, big blue eyes swimming with tears, a grin on his beloved, familiar face. 

On her last morning in New York, Eulalia and Emmy lie in bed - well, Emmy Rose lies in bed and Eulalia Sydney is on the floor - in silence, both on their phones. Occasionally one of them will hit play on a video by accident and then apologize for disturbing the other. It’s hot and stuffy in the little room and Eulalia’s kind of hungry but she’s content. Emmy breathes steadily, and out in the street a car alarm wails.

“What do you wanna do today?” Eulalia asks. Emmy groans. 

“You wanna get a tattoo?” Eulalia shuffles up on her elbows. “I kind of wanna get a tattoo.” 

The buzz of the gun isn’t unfamiliar to Eulalia - this is her third tattoo. She has a wobbly cutlery set on her right shoulder blade, courtesy of Jyoti and a stick and poke, and the red stars of the Chicago flag on the inside of her right forearm. She got that in Barcelona, when she was drunk on homesickness. Maybe she’ll get another one, or two. She kind of wants to get some brown bears somewhere, on her thighs or something. Six of them. She probably won’t get as many tattoos as her parents. They have flowers for their children, each other’s names on their ribs, and all the other bits and pieces that made them up before they knew each other. When Eulalia was a child, she used to clamber all over them, point to the pictures with a chubby finger and say: wassat? Her favorite stories always involved her, of course. The narcissus on her father’s bicep and her mother’s shoulder blade. She liked the snail that lived on her father’s forearm - she’s got a memory of pressing a sticky kiss to it on a summer’s day. She wonders idly as the artist traces words onto the skin of her back if her children will ever ask her about her tattoos. Or maybe they won’t be her children, maybe they’ll be Emmy’s or Bea’s or Baby Carmy’s. She might not have kids. Or she might have a house full. She doesn’t know what her life’s going to look like. She hopes it’s beautiful. 

“You know what I think about a lot?” she asks Emmy. Emmy’s run out of space on her arms, so she’s starting on her legs, a garden of flowers on her ankles, roses and daisies and forget-me-nots. They’re top-and-tailing on the benches, Eulalia on her stomach with her head by Emmy’s feet. The tattoo artists are silent, engrossed in their work. Eulalia likes the sting - it reminds her of the prickles of a jackfruit before you peel it. 

“You think about everything a lot,” Emmy says. 

“D’you think she’d like us? The first Eulalia?” 

Emmy hums. “I don’t know. Probably? It’s hard to - if she hadn’t died, I don’t think we’d have even been born.”

“You might’ve,” Eulalia says, “I don’t know about me. Sometimes I think about Mom having a baby when she doesn't have a mom, and I feel so sad.”

“She had Pop, though,” Emmy says, “and then she had Dad and she had Abuela and Nat. I think if you said to her, you had babies on your own, she’d be like, the fuck are you talking about?”

“It’s still sad though.”

“Yeah,” Emmy says, “it is.” 

They slip back into silence for a while. Emmy gets her phone out, sends another selfie to the group chat. 

“We missed you,” Emmy says into the quiet, “when you were away. I’m glad you’re home.” 

“I missed you too,” Eulalia replies, “and you have no fucking idea how happy I am to be home.” 

Between her shoulder blades, in an italicized script that mimics the French on her mother’s back, are the words: mal ocell el que s’embruta en son. It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest. Don’t shit where you eat.  

Chapter Text

Working at Trio reminds her of why she loves this shit. Despite its star, it’s pretty relaxed. Dana’s a good boss, firm but fair and she doesn’t harp on about how she knew Eulalia when she was small. The menu is kind of chaotic, a mishmash of cuisines inspired by all the chefs that have worked there. Eulalia’s contribution is Sydney’s ollada and jollof rice. Jyoti’s got her korri gassi kati rolls, and Eulalia’s fingertips turn orange from all the turmeric they use. She loves it. She gets a ride to work from whoever’s taking the baby to school - her mom or her dad or Pop or, terrifyingly, Bea, who passed her driver’s test first time and is as excellent behind the wheel as she is at everything she turns her hand to. Eulalia’s days are spent shooting the shit with Jyoti and her fellow line cooks, shelling peas and deseeding peppers and laughing. They take their smoke breaks with front-of-house. They’re students, mostly, and they make her feel very old. Every night before she goes home, she drenches herself with perfume, because she doesn’t want her parents to know she’s still smoking. Although, she figures they’re probably onto her. She never could keep a secret from them for long. 

Huddled around their cigarettes, Jyoti and Eulalia’s conversations start to take the shape of dreams. If we had our own spot. If this was our place. The ifs begin to sound like whens, and Eulalia wants again. 

She and Jyoti go out drinking after work. Eulalia still likes a deep red wine. They flirt with bartenders and grad students, they dance to old Beyoncé songs and sing karaoke, badly. At the end of the night, Eulalia calls Carmen, and he picks her up. It doesn’t matter what time it is, or where in the city they’ve wound up. She falls asleep in the passenger seat, Curtis Mayfield playing quietly on the stereo, Carmen drumming his fingers against the steering wheel. 

She still hasn’t read Paloma’s email. She’s tempted to delete it, or get her mom to read it. Uncle Jimmy’s lawyer makes some vague overtures into trying to get the Nonna money back, but it’s a futile endeavor. She’d parted with the cash willingly, no paperwork had been signed. And he had used the money to invest in a restaurant, like he said he would. And Eulalia had caused quite significant criminal damage to that restaurant which she absolutely did not want to face charges for. 

“Family trip to London to rob him?” Sydney suggests, and Eulalia thinks she’s only half-joking. 

Jyoti offers to read it on their smoke break, but Eulalia doesn’t want to fuck up service. In the end, she reads it on the El, during a delay on the Brown line, standing up sandwiched between some finance bro and a little old lady. 

Eulalia, it reads. I understand that you will not be returning to us at Dulce. I am disappointed our working relationship is ending this way. 

Well, thinks Eulalia, I’m disappointed you hired your asshole son-in-law to be your chef de cuisine so, like, what do you want me to do about it? 

I had the great pleasure of meeting your father again today when he came to pick up your possessions - and being on the receiving end of that famous Berzatto temper. 

Eulalia snorts and the train sways. She doesn’t know exactly what passed when Carmen liberated her cookbooks from Dulce’s office, but she can imagine it pretty well, her dad red-faced and spitting. It might’ve embarrassed her a year ago, five years ago, the way the vein in Carmen’s neck protrudes when he perceives a wrong towards his wife or his children. But she knows now that not everyone is loved like that. 

I feel I owe you an explanation. 

Yeah, you got that right.

I was not a very good mother to my daughter. I state this as a simple fact. I was resentful of her, of how having her had harmed my career and ruined my relationship.

Eulalia’s stomach churns. A seat is freed up, but she can’t tear her eyes away from her phone, can’t stop reading. What a thing to say. If Eulalia knew Sydney felt that way about her - well, actually, if she knew Sydney felt that way about her, she wouldn’t blame her. 

I know I was not a good mother because my daughter is not a good person. I allowed my resentments to poison her. And when she met Oliver Brandon, I pushed her towards him, feeling that at last, she would be somebody else’s problem. More than that, as I’m sure you are aware, the Brandon family are monied. He could give her what she wanted, what I couldn’t. And the connection benefited me too - his family were interested in investing in my work. I tied my daughter to a weak man, a self-serving coward, for my own financial gain. I encouraged them to marry. I encouraged them to start their own restaurant, when I knew neither of them were ready. When the project failed, Oliver had a breakdown. I felt responsible, and I allowed him to come and recover at Dulce. 

The train stutters to a stop, and so many people get on board that Eulalia has to shuffle into a corner, pressed against the window as the city whizzes by. The thought of someone reading these words over her shoulder makes her want to drop dead, but she can’t stop now. She’s nearly there. Her mouth is dry, her hands are trembling, and she reads on. 

Dulce is my life’s work. It is the thing that I am most proud of. When I die, my obituary will read ‘Executive Chef of Dulce Paloma Andreu’. I doubt they will even mention Lola. It was wrong of me to bring Brandon into the restaurant, I see that now. I do not respect him as a chef or as a man. 

Eulalia laughs out loud. She can’t help it. The finance bro shoots her a look of disdain. She’s surprised he even heard her over his AirPods, Mac Miller blaring loud enough for Eulalia to make out every word over the thump of her own heart. She pulls a face right back at him, like she’s tough. The train’s delayed again, and Eulalia turns around so she’s facing the window, the sunset illuminating Paloma’s words. 

But I owed him a great debt. I knew that his relationship with my daughter was fragile. I felt perhaps that if I could help them in some way, it would fix what had been broken between myself and Lola for many years. I was naive. I suspected that your feelings towards him were far from professional, but I’m afraid I underestimated both his weakness and your strength. When it became clear to me that you were intimately involved, I should have told you the truth. However, I did not feel it was my place. The kitchen was thriving, and you were thriving within it. I feared that if I told you, you would leave Dulce, and I would be left with Brandon.

At her stop, her knees are like jelly and she clutches the bannisters on the stairs. Her dad usually meets her at the station but he’s at an art show in Andersonville with the baby. She thinks about calling her mom when she turns her ankle on the last step, thinks about throwing herself down onto the ground and howling like a kid who’s been told she can’t have any candy. She leans against a ticket machine and takes deep, shuddering breaths. All the shame and the humiliation. 

What if she dies here, on the ground by the 57th Street train station, in the weeds and the dog piss?

Here lies Eulalia Sydney Adamu Berzatto. She made a mean omelette. 

She spits bile into the street, and thinks of her mother. It gives her strength. 

I hope in time you can forgive me, the email concludes. I look forward to hearing about what you get up to in the future. You really are an excellent chef. 

Eulalia stumbles home like she’s tipsy, and Sydney’s waiting for her. She gets her mom to read the email at their kitchen table, the two of them holding hands over steaming mugs of tea. Sydney reads aloud, under her breath, kisses her teeth when she comes across a sentence she finds particularly distasteful. 

“Well,” she says eventually, “that was the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever read in my life.” 

Eulalia laughs, and the weight falls from her shoulders. She takes a long sip of her tea, safe and warm and loved. 

“They’re assholes, baby,” Sydney says, “you’re better off without them.” 

“I know,” Eulalia says. “I don’t think I’m even mad about it anymore. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still want my fucking money. But I’m just like, I feel sorry for them. For all of them.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Sydney, taking her hand again and squeezing it. “To be honest, I kind of feel sorry for anyone who isn’t us.” 

She laughs, and Eulalia laughs too. 

One night she gets home from work and her parents are in the kitchen, grilling sandwiches. 

“Hi, baby,” her mother says, “you want one?”

“Please,” Eulalia says, slinging her bag onto the kitchen table. “The baby in bed?”

“Bea, too,” Sydney nods, “my little nerd. Service good?”

“You want pop?” Eulalia asks, going to the fridge. Carmen and Sydney decline her offer; they drink herbal tea with their midnight grilled cheeses these days. Eulalia digs a can of Coke out of the fridge and glugs it with relish. Her back aches, she has blisters and her hands are chapped as hell. She feels fucking great.

“Eh,” she says in answer to her mother, “been better, been worse.”

“Guide’s coming up,” Carmen says, “you feeling good?”

She screws up her nose, rubs the condensation from the can with her fingertips. “I don’t know,” she says. “I think… it’s not in my control, y’know? I think as long as we keep making food that I think is fucking fire, and I get to keep cooking with people I like and who like me, then… like, obviously it matters, it would obviously suck so bad if we lost the star, and I would absolutely blame myself if that happened but I’m trying to like, not get in my head about it. Because I can only do what I can do. You know what I’m saying?” 

“Yeah,” he says with a laugh, “I do.” 

“God, do you remember the first time we got the Guide in?” Sydney says, turning the grilled cheese over. “And we were all like, I think that lady’s from the Guide, but don’t say anything, and then you walked in, baby, and you were like, at the top of your voice, like, excuse me, do you work for the Michelin Guide?”

“Oh, no,” Eulalia laughs and buries her face in her hands. 

“It was cute,” Carmen reassures her, “it was very cute.” 

“And she was from the Michelin Guide,” says Sydney, “ and we did get a star. Can I get a plate for this grilled cheese? Thank you.” 

She hands Eulalia a steaming plate, and it smells so freaking good. It’s too hot to eat really, but that doesn’t stop Eulalia nibbling it. The tip of her tongue has survived far worse.   

“Actually,” Sydney says, “we wanted to talk to you about something.” 

Eulalia stops her nibbling and puts the plate down on the countertop. “You pregnant again?” 

Her mom’s forty-nine; it’s not out of the realms of possibility. Didn’t Rachel Weisz have a baby when she was that age? How old was Janet Jackson? Sydney laughs and Carmen splutters.

“Ha! No. Uh, no, I don’t - I don’t think so…” Sydney looks round at Carmen, who's got his face in his hands.

“Don’t look at me,” he says, and Sydney laughs harder. Eulalia wrinkles her nose, embarrassed. 

“No, that’s not - uh, no, it’s - so like,” Sydney clears her throat, “so you know we’re super, super proud of you, everything you’ve been doing since you came home, the way you’ve like, handled yourself, working at Trio, all of that. And um, what we wanted to, uh, to ask you is, well, what would you - would you be interested in - Carm, help me out here - ” 

Carmen holds his chin in his hand, the way he does when he’s nervous. Eulalia kind of wants to say to them: it’s just me. You taught me how to go to the bathroom. I used to sleep in your bed.

“We wanna open a restaurant,” Carmen says, “with you.” 

“Like a good, cool, fresh spot,“ Sydney says quickly, “and it would be, um, we’d be co-ECs and it would be like, it would be all you, really, and it wouldn’t be - it wouldn’t be The Bear again, but it would be, it would be a family restaurant, y’know, like we really fucking miss cooking together and - ” 

“Yes,” Eulalia says, like if she pauses for a second they’ll rescind the offer, “like, a million times, yes, one hundred - are you fucking kidding me? This is like, my dream. Oh my God, can we - can we poach Jyoti?” 

Sydney and Carmen lock eyes with each other and laugh, really laugh, and Eulalia’s laughing too, joy bubbling out of her. 

“Are you serious?” Eulalia says.

“As a heart attack,” her father says.

Sydney chews on her bottom lip. “You’re not - I was worried you were going to be like, ugh, Mom, I’m not your fuckin’ nepotism baby -” 

“Oh my God, Mom,” Eulalia shakes her head vehemently, “no, literally, there are worse things to be than fine dining’s nepotism baby.”

Sydney laughs. “That’s what I was trying to tell you!” 

“And besides,” Eulalia rips the corner of her grilled cheese off and pops it into her mouth with glee, “I’m not opening a restaurant with my parents, I’m opening a restaurant with television’s Sydney Adamu, the most excellent executive chef at the most excellent restaurant in America - in the world . And, y’know, her husband, who was kind of a big deal back in the day.” 

Carmen laughs, but Sydney snorts derisively. 

“Oh, sure, if being Food and Wine’s best new chef at twenty-one is a big deal,” Sydney says.

“Syd,” Carmen says, reaching for her, “c’mon, man.” 

She goes to him easily, wraps her arms around him, still talking as she does.

“James Beard awards,” she continues, “worked at Noma, Eleven Madison Park, French Laundry - ” 

“Alright,” Eulalia laughs, “okay, alright.” 

“I’m not finished - opened his own spot too, got a star, raised three kids - four kids, I forgot about the baby - yeah, if you call all that being kind of a big deal, I guess he used to be kind of a big deal.” 

Carmen’s face is pink, his shoulders shaking with laughter. He buries his face in Sydney’s braids, an arm around her waist.

“You got a crush on this guy or something?” Eulalia says. Sydney and Carmen just laugh and laugh. 

“Leave me alone,” Sydney says, “I just made you a grilled cheese!”

“A really great grilled cheese,” says Eulalia, “maybe it should go on the menu at the new spot!” 

Sydney snorts, but Carmen emerges from her hair, this nervous, antsy look on his face. Eulalia can see him at three years old, ruddy-cheeked and anxious. 

“So you’re in?” he asks, and she nods.

“Yeah,” she says, “are you kidding me, Dad? Of course I am. I’m all in.” 

The old place is a yoga studio now, it’s bougie as fuck. Eulalia feels a pang whenever she walks past it. Her whole childhood was there. But they want something more central for the new spot, closer to the river maybe. They walk the streets of Chicago like they’re tourists, up with the sun and home when it gets dark. Sydney and Carmen walk hand-in-hand, Eulalia trotting ahead of them, the way they used to when she was little. When they cross a road, Carmen still reaches for her hand. 

When Eulalia imagines it, she sees herself manning the old expo, Uncle Mikey’s note and her mother’s Coach K photo card still stuck to it. It’s hard for her to picture something brand new. 

They find an old warehouse that’s going cheap, but her mom doesn’t like how dark it is. There’s an almost derelict firehouse on the market - when they go to view the place, the baby tags along, and he and Eulalia slide down the pole despite the realtor squawking about health and safety. But Sydney and Carmen think there’s too much that needs doing to it, and they’re not made of money. Bold words from the couple who took out a million dollar loan for their first restaurant, Eulalia teases, and they laugh and laugh. 

She falls asleep thinking about the restaurant, a pen clutched in her hand, mid-sketch of her ideal dining room. She wants an open plan kitchen. She wants a vegetable garden. She wants everyone who eats there to feel welcomed and safe. She wants regulars, she wants to see kids grow up.

Her mom says these things are all achievable, all possible. They toss around menu ideas while they’re driving to work, while they’re watching old Bob’s Burgers episodes with the baby. Bea snaps that if she hears the word yam one more time she’s going to pack up and move to New York to live with Emmy and never speak to any of them ever again, and Carmen’s face goes redder than a beet. 

So it’s not all easy. 

Prior to this, Eulalia had objectively known that her parents were great cooks, that they worked well together. Her childhood had been spent taste testing their ideas, sitting in the office while they bickered about the best kind of artichoke to use in this recipe or that. But witnessing their partnership and trying to be involved in it are two very different things. Sometimes they’ll have a conversation and she’ll feel like she’s watching some Danish crime drama with the subtitles off. She has no idea what they’re talking about. 

“Creamed?” Sydney will say, and Carmen will scrunch up his nose. 

“Red?” 

“Green,” Sydney says, “with olives.” 

“Anchovies,” he’ll say, and Sydney will laugh. 

“That’s something.” 

And Eulalia’s left wondering what the something is.

The baby hasn’t been a baby for a long time, but they still call him the baby anyway. His friends from school - a motley crew of bespectacled computer game enthusiasts, all of them completely terrified of his older sisters - call him CJ. It makes Eulalia laugh whenever she hears it. 

In the years she was gone, the baby became a person, just like Emmy, just like Bea. Just like Eulalia did too. 

One Wednesday, the house is full of them, these loud, gangly creatures that smell of hay and have teeth too big for their mouths. 

Eulalia’s in the kitchen, as she always is, fooling around with a goat’s cheese and sundried tomato tart. It’s not really for the menu - she’s been watching old Masterchef episodes, and this morning she stumbled upon the one she stars in herself, the one where her parents were judges. She’d texted her mother with a funny screenshot of the two of them, captioned who are these children?! 

Sydney had replied with an anecdote about how she could barely eat any of the final products, because she was pregnant with Emmy at the time. The story made Eulalia’s chest ache. When she thinks about how much Sydney has given up - sometimes she can’t breathe. So she’s in the kitchen with an attempt at a tart, trying to make amends in any way she can. 

The baby bounds in, his curls bouncing around his head like a halo. Eulalia loves him so much. 

“Can we have those pistachio cookies Mommy made?” the baby asks. Eulalia nods - there is never, has never been, and never will be, food that cannot be eaten in this house. 

“Your friends want drinks or something too?” Eulalia says as the baby clatters around in the refrigerator. 

“No, thank you,” he says, “um, ‘lia?”

Eulalia’s deseeding a sundried tomato, and she doesn’t look up. 

“Uh-huh,” she says. 

“How long - I mean - is it - will you - are you going to go away again?” 

“Oh,” she lays the knife down, “oh, um. Not - well, eventually, I will, Carm, yeah.” 

His head is still in the fridge. “Oh,” he says, “okay.” 

“But it won’t be, um, it won’t be like it was before. When I was in Spain.”

The baby emerges victorious with a Tupperware filled to the brim with light green cookies, lovingly dusted with sugar by Sydney’s careful hands. 

“It’s okay,” he says, “I was just wonderin’.” 

“Can I ask why you were just wondering?” 

She hopes no one’s said anything cruel to him. Life is, she knows, a series of ups and downs, and she can’t stop pain coming to the baby any more than she can stop dawn rising, but if she can lessen it, somehow, anyhow, she’ll take it. 

“Oh, uh, just, like, y’know, Emmy’s in New York and Bea’s goin’ to Boston, and Mommy said maybe once the restaurant opens, you might want to live somewhere else, ‘cause you might get sick of her an’ Daddy, workin’ together an’ livin’ together and everything. So I was just, y’know, I was just wonderin’.” 

He’s chewing on his bottom lip, his chin a little dented like it would when he was a baby about to cry. 

It’s not like Eulalia’s not thought about it - it’s impossible to return to your childhood bedroom and not slightly regress into a petulant teenager, and argue with your mother about laundry and the dishes and taking the garbage out. Sometimes she longs for her own space, to lock a door and be alone with herself and her thoughts. She’s discussed it with Jyoti in vague, nebulous ways. They could save on rent if they got a little two-bed, and she’s certain Jyoti wouldn’t be the kind of roommate who let food grow mold or was unkind and stingy. But it’s not certain. She’s still fragile, the earth is still unsteady beneath her feet sometimes. Some days, the only thing that can soothe her is resting her head on her mother’s shoulder. But it will happen. She will leave this house again. 

“Baby,” she says to him, “I will go, of course I will. And you will too, some day. But the thing is - the great thing is - that there’s - okay, so, there’s this golden thread, right, and it’s so, so gentle and fine you can hardly see it, but it’s there. It’s tied around your wrist and it’s tied around mine, and Mom and Dad and Emmy and Bea. And no matter where you are in the world, where you go or what you do, it’s always there. And if you’re ever - when I was in Barcelona, and I felt so lonely, I thought I was going to die, I’d just tug on the thread, and I’d feel all your hearts beating next to mine. You understand? It doesn’t matter where I go next or what I do, or where you go and what you do when you grow up. There’s nothing anyone can do to make you not my baby brother.” 

The baby blinks his big brown eyes at her. “Right,” he says, “and, uh, you’ll remember you have a phone next time you move out, won’t you?” 

Eulalia snorts. He sounds like their dad. 

“Yeah,” she says, “that too.”

He grins at her. “You wanna come play Mario?”

“Nah,” she says, “I don’t wanna destroy your street cred. Yell if you need anything, alright?” 

The baby nods, slams the fridge door shut and begins to gallop out the room. He pauses, pulls back. 

“Thanks, Eulalia,” he says, “I love you.”  

They jam on the menu in the kitchen at home, spending hours searing duck and crushing garlic. They wheel this big old glass board in there, and the baby covers it in doodles of bears. He’s really a very talented artist. 

“I’m thinking, like, a plum with the duck?” Sydney says, and Carmen hums. Eulalia notes it down. 

“A compote maybe,” she says, and her mother nods. 

“Yeah, or like, a jelly? You want to give it a shot?” 

“Yes, chef,” Eulalia says, and grabs some plums from the fruit bowl. Sydney laughs. “I’m a little rusty on jellies though, you might need to give me a hand - I don’t wanna fuck this up.” 

“It’s fine if you do,” Carmen says, kneading dough on the kitchen counter, “we can get things wrong here so we can get it right later.” 

Eulalia starts to pit and quarter the plums, listens to her parents sing the old songs, watches them dance the old dance. Occasionally, her mother or her father will proffer a spoonful of sauce or a forkful of duck with a here, baby, you try. They study her face closely while she chews, and sigh with relief when she likes something. 

“You remember the first time we ever did this?” Sydney says to Carmen. “You had your jeans in the oven.” 

Carmen ducks his head like he’s a little embarrassed still, twenty-five years after the fact. “Yeah,” he says, “to keep ‘em dry.”

“You had your jeans where, Dad?” 

“Oh, go easy on him,” Sydney laughs, “I thought it was kind of ingenious.” 

Carmen kisses her quickly over the kitchen counter, their hands never stopping the rhythm of their work. Eulalia, accustomed to the way they are with each other, keeps stirring what will eventually become a jelly on the stove. 

“What about cherries?” Eulalia suggests, and her parents hum in harmony.

“Duck?” Carmen asks.

“Chicken,” Sydney says, and Eulalia can see it now. Matte black plates, steaming roasted chicken and a thick dark red sauce. Her mouth’s watering. 

“Coulis,” she says, and Sydney whistles. 

“That’s something,” Eulalia’s parents say at the exact same time, and the kitchen buzzes with their laughter.

The funny thing is that the spot they end up with used to be a sandwich shop. The floor sticks to their shoes and Carmen whistles lowly.

“Woah,” he says, “I just got the gnarliest deja vu.”

“Holy shit,” Sydney agrees, and takes his hand in her own. 

The realtor says it’s being sold because the current proprietor wants to spend more time with his family, which Eulalia thinks is nice. The kitchen’s in good shape, although she wants to knock a wall or two down, and the dining room will need a complete overhaul. 

“But it’s doable, right?” Eulalia asks, feeling five years old again, looking to her parents for everything. “Like, we could do it?” 

Sydney looks at Carmen and Carmen looks at Sydney. They’re both trying not to smile too hard, faces Eulalia knows well. 

“Okay,” Sydney says to her daughter, “so what’ll we call it?” 

When she finishes working her notice at Trio - they send her off with a pretty sweet set of new knives, a bouquet of flowers and fifty dollars shoved in a greeting card - she spends more time with just her dad while her mom wraps up the final season of her show. 

“I’m thinking fusion,” Carmen tells Eulalia, kneading dough for pasta, “classic French from me, West African from your mom, Mediterranean from you. Maybe a little new American. A chaos menu, like before.” 

“Yeah, I guess,” Eulalia says, “we’re going for a star, right?” 

“You want one?” 

“I think it’d be nice, yeah,” she says, “but I don’t know if a chaos menu is kind of… well, it’s a little passé.”

Carmen laughs. “Jeez,” he says, “one minute you’re the future of the culinary arts, the next your daughter’s calling your menu passé.”

“Such is life,” Eulalia says. “I don’t hate the fusion thing. I don’t know about doing Mediterranean stuff, though.”

Carmen nods. “Okay. You don’t like it?”

“I don’t not like it, I just don’t love it,” Eulalia says, “I want the menu to be like… stuff we really love. And not just me and you and Mom, but stuff the baby loves, and Bea and Em.” 

Carmen considers this. “Could you chop that spinach for me, please?” he asks Eulalia, who does so. 

“Say more,” he says. 

“Mom’s risotto,” she says, “and pot au feu. Like, wholesome, heartwarming food from our family to yours, y’know?” 

“You sound like Syd,” Carmen says, “could you get me the ricotta, please?”

“We could do Uncle Mikey’s spaghetti,” Eulalia says into the fridge door, “if you - I don’t know, would you want to?” 

She glances around the door at him. Carmen doesn’t look up from his dough but his brow is furrowed. Eulalia chews on her bottom lip, anxious not to upset him. He talks about his brother a lot, more now than he did when she was a child. And the spaghetti is legendary in the history of her family. The day Carmen discovered the money in the tomato cans was the day he became a father. 

“Elevated,” he says eventually, “maybe.”

“Sure,” Eulalia says, emptying the ricotta into a bowl and handing it to him. She watches as he mixes the ricotta and the spinach together with his hands, sure and steady. She used to watch him in the kitchen when she was a kid like she was watching a fireworks show, oohing and ahhing. He’s a magician. 

“I was thinking,” she says, “about the name, y’know?”

“Uh-huh,” Carmen glances up at her, nodding in that way he does while he’s cooking. 

“I know you and Mom said it’s not The Bear again, and it’s not, I know it’s not. But I was thinking - I was thinking about Uncle Mikey, and I was thinking about the first Eulalia and I was thinking about you and I was thinking about Mom and like, it’s The Bear. It’s the thing. So I wouldn’t mind if we, um, if we did it again. You know what I’m saying?” 

Carmen says nothing, just rolls out the pasta dough carefully, his jaw set. Eulalia’s stomach starts to churn - maybe she got this one wrong. Maybe he wants a fresh start. Maybe she should’ve gone with Emmy's suggestion of just calling it Eulalia’s. 

“Do you hate it?” she asks. He looks up, his eyes wide.

“What? No, I - ” he runs a floury hand through his hair, and then realizes what he’s done and curses under his breath, the salt-and-pepper streaked with white. He huffs. “I want you to have something that’s yours, honey.” 

“But The Bear is mine,” she says in a quiet, small voice. Carmen’s hands still on the kitchen counter. 

“You sure?” he says, and she nods.

“Because I want it - I want it to feel like home,” she says, “and when I think of The Bear, that’s - that’s what I think of. Being home and being safe and being loved. And I want it - okay, like, I was talking to Emmy about this the other night, right, and I want it to be the kind of place people come to when they’ve had a win and the kind of place they come to when they’ve lost. Like, your best friend’s just been dumped or - or your boyfriend’s married and he stole your inheritance - ” 

Carmen snorts, which makes Eulalia happy. Her mom always says that everything horrible eventually just becomes a funny story.  

“And you’re in the depths of despair,” Eulalia continues, “and the only thing that’s going to make it better is Carmen Berzatto’s pot au feu. Or Sydney Adamu’s raspberry risotto. Or Jyoti D’Costa’s korri gassi. Or if you’ve got a date, right, you work with this guy and you like him so, so much, and you’re going for lunch somewhere and you’re so nervous and you think, man, I gotta impress him, where'd you go?” 

“For Eulalia Adamu Berzatto’s ollada,” Carmen says, and Eulalia laughs.

“Of course,” she says, “you get the picture.” 

He nods. “It sounds nice,” he says. 

“You think he’d like me?” Eulalia asks. She’d meant to say do you think he’d like it, but it came out wrong, and she winces, embarrassed. Carmen’s face falls, a great valley of concern denting his forehead. 

“He’d love you,” he says, “he loves you, y’know?” 

She nods, tears prickling at the back of her throat. If God said to her, I’ll make it so your dad never lost his brother and your mom never lost her mom, in return for you never having been born, she’d do it. She wouldn’t even think twice about it. She’s always felt like that, even when she was a little kid. But what she knows now, what she’s certain of, is that Carmen and Sydney wouldn’t let her. Not for a day. Not for a minute. 

They get actual contractors in for the refurb, not Faks. Eulalia supervises them, armed with a clipboard, and Sydney calls her my little dictator. They pull down the walls between the kitchen and the dining room, they rip up the linoleum and polish the hardwood underneath, they install smooth, stainless steel counters. They paint the place a dark green that reminds Eulalia of a coat her mom used to wear. 

In the office, she hangs up three frames. The first is the sketch of the first Bear her father did before she was born. The second is a fading photograph of her parents at The Beef, in their matching blues and whites, smiling ruefully at the camera. The third is from the baby’s birthday. Emmy had flown in especially as a surprise, and someone - Eulalia thinks maybe it was Sophia, who always has her phone in her hand - had caught the exact moment Emmy came out with his cake. They’re lit up by the candles, the four of them, the baby’s face scrunched up in joy, Eulalia and Bea squished either side of him. Sydney and Carmen are a little behind them, Sydney’s hands clasped together, leaning back against Carmen’s chest. It makes Eulalia’s heart ache. 

When the building work is finished, she invites Jyoti over and they get wine drunk in the kitchen, their laughter echoing through the empty restaurant. They run through the dining room, clasping hands and giggling like little kids. They can hardly believe all this is theirs. Eulalia loves every inch of the place. She knows that eventually she will grow sick of it, that she’ll walk through the building in a bleary-eyed haze, that she will scrub at the grout with a toothbrush and her parents will yell at her to take a day off. But that day isn’t here yet. She wants to bottle this feeling, this amazement, so she can take it out whenever the malaise sets in, so she can always remember what it was like to feel so lucky. 

This isn’t Sydney and Carmen’s first rodeo by a long shot, and they’re so good at it. They know just what to say to the investors and the journalists who call. The first time Eulalia speaks to a reporter, she clutches Sydney’s hand for the whole interview, and she trips over her words. She’s a little embarrassed. 

“Don’t beat yourself up about it, baby,” Sydney reassures her in the office one day while they’re poring over a write-up in the Herald. “I was horrible at this shit when we first started out, you’ll get better at it. Maybe, like, talk about something that’s not the restaurant or food at the start of the conversation, ease into it.” 

“But I only ever want to talk about the restaurant or food…” Eulalia says, and Sydney laughs.

“You like other things! Talk about basketball, those guys from food places are always really into basketball.”

“Oh, you think we can get Angel Reese to come to the launch?” Eulalia says, lighting up inside. Sydney cackles.

“Why, you wanna pour a jug of water over her again?” 

“Mom,” Eulalia groans, “I apologized profusely for that!”

“I’m just playing, baby,” Sydney says, “I’ll see what I can do.” 

Eulalia knows that when she says that, she means it. A wave of affection for her mother washes over her, and she hugs her tight. 

“Oh, baby,” Sydney squeezes her, “what’s all this in aid of?”

“I just really love you,” Eulalia says, burying her face into her mother’s neck, “thank you.” 

Sydney holds her, breathing her in.

I’m you, Eulalia wants to say, and you’re me. Sydney would probably laugh at her though. She’s an unsentimental woman. Eulalia loves her more than life itself. 

Two weeks later, Danny Allen calls. 

Chapter Text

Keeping anything from her parents makes Eulalia physically sick. She’s vomiting in the gutter outside the restaurant every morning, and blaming the acid reflux she inherited from her mother. She knows objectively that a problem - and Danny Allen and their looming coffee appointment is a problem - shared is a problem halved. She knows this. But the thing is, this confirms what she’s always feared. That she’s different forever, she’s separate forever. There is nothing she will ever be able to do to make Carmen her biological father and Danny Allen nothing to her. She was born wrong. She has to live with it. 

Beatrice Bukayo Adamu Berzatto drives a beat-up mint green 2024 Fiat 500, the backseats creaking under the weight of her textbooks and telescopes. Sitting in the passenger seat, Solange on the aux, might be Eulalia’s second favorite place in the world after the kitchen. She’ll go anywhere with Bea. They go on Costco runs, they do the grocery shopping, sometimes they drive down Sheridan Road just for the hell of it. Eulalia rolls the window right down and takes deep gulps of fresh air.  

“When you talk about me,” she asks Bea one Tuesday in May while they’re waiting for their food at the Wendy’s drive-thru, “do you say I’m your half-sister?” 

Bea’s sweet round face creases with confusion. 

“Why would I say that?” 

“I don’t know,” Eulalia says, shrugging, trying to convey a sense of carefreeness she doesn’t actually feel, “I just - you’re very like, factual, you love math, so I just wondered if - y’know, it is a fact about me. Like, I am your half-sister.” 

Bea huffs, her cheeks dimpling. “I don’t ever want to hear you say that shit again,” she says. 

Eulalia gasps - Bea never curses. She sounds like Emmy Rose, her consonants harsh. 

“Half-sister,” Bea scoffs, “give me a fucking break!”

“Beatrice,” Eulalia says, scandalised. Bea ignores her.

“Yeah, I like numbers,” she says, “and - and - things that are true, and real, but you - you being my sister is, like, the realest thing in the world. Do you not - do you not know that?” 

Eulalia’s not sure how much she should say. She looks down at her hands and chews on her lip.

“Sometimes,” she says, quietly, “it seems like - it’s like - sometimes I feel like, because you’re all Dad’s and I’m not… I don’t know. I feel like an alien, sometimes, I think.” 

Bea considers this, scrunches up her button nose.

“I hope I’ve never done anything to make you feel like that,” she says, serious and quiet, the Beatrice Eulalia knows again. Eulalia shakes her head. 

“I don’t think it’s because of anything anyone’s done,” she says, “I think it’s - I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. Just, that’s how I feel sometimes, is all.”  

“I get it,” Bea says, “well, no, I don’t - I don’t get it, I won’t ever get it-get it, but - I don’t know, I don’t want you to think you’re the only alien in our family. Because sometimes, y’know, when you’re all cooking or talking about food or when Dad and Emmy and the baby are drawing together, sometimes I feel like I’m a changeling or something. You know what I mean? Because I don’t do anything like that. My brain doesn’t work like that.” 

Eulalia looks at her, her baby sister, the smartest person she knows. She used to carry Beatrice around the restaurant like she was a living doll. Her memories of when Emmy was born are kind of hazy, smeared around the edges, but she remembers everything about Bea. How tiny she was, how pink. The way she was so curious about everything, even when she was little. Eulalia used to read to her. Emmy never sat still for long enough to be read to, but Beatrice listened intently, right from the start, her big hazel eyes locked on her sister. Sydney used to say that Bea was going to grow up to be a rocket scientist because of Eulalia. Thinking about it, that she may have contributed to Bea’s genius, makes her feel all warm inside, even now. 

“You’re the best baby sister in the world,” Eulalia says, “and a straight-up genius. You’re not a changeling or an alien.” 

Bea smiles. “It’s okay. I think we might be a family of aliens. You’re not half anything, Eulalia. You’re kind of… I don’t know, you’re kind of everything.” 

It’s sweet of her to say, but Eulalia’s phone’s burning in her pocket with an unread text from Danny Allen. So it doesn’t feel true. She wants to say something, she wants to say anything, but she can’t. The words won’t come. 

An acne-ridden teenage boy leans out of the window of the Wendy’s and beckons them forward. Eulalia sinks into her seat and sighs.

The restaurant starts to take shape. It’s like doing a puzzle, Eulalia thinks, or knitting a sweater. You’re focused on all the different shapes, searching for the flat edges of the jigsaw pieces or fixing a jagged row of yarn, and it’s easy to forget you’re making something bigger, something that’s going to look beautiful when it’s finished. 

The details get overwhelming. She starts crying over plates because she doesn’t know if they want ceramic or porcelain, off-white or bright white, and her mother intervenes. 

“That’s it,” Sydney says as soon as Eulalia’s chin dimples, “we’re going for cake.” 

“But the - ” 

“Nope,” Sydney gets to her feet, pulls her braids into a ponytail with the scrunchie that’s lived on her wrist Eulalia’s entire life. “Carm, can you do plates?”

“Sure,” he says, and she kisses him quickly, the way she always does. 

“C’mon, baby,” Sydney says, pulling Eulalia out of her chair. “It’s alright, Daddy’s got it. Let’s get some cake.” 

“But - ”

“No buts,” Sydney says, and drags her daughter out the door. 

They wander the streets in silence, the sun so bright Sydney’s got shades on. Eulalia considers just coming out and saying it. She practises the words in her head.

I’m getting coffee with Danny Allen. Hey, you remember Danny Allen, right, Mom? Well, he asked me to get coffee. I’ve decided to meet my biological father, Daniel Allen. 

It’s not like they’ve never talked about him before. She can’t even remember the first time her mother explained it to her - that she was born before Sydney met Carmen, that half of her biology was from some guy she’d never met and would probably never meet. And when she got older, she came to understand more what exactly it meant. She owes her existence to a handful of hours and a broken condom, an unsatisfying fumble in a shared house, five glasses of wine and a slow jams Spotify playlist. Eulalia knows objectively that she’s made up of more than that, that five minutes doesn’t define a person’s life, but it weighs on her. 

She thought that when she found she loved the baby, when she learned she could always come home, that the feelings that have plagued her all her life would be banished for good. But they haven’t. She feels jumbled up and gone-wrong, like a can of pop that’s been battered on its way to delivery. Someone’s going to crack her open and it’ll spray everywhere, all the guilt and the shame and the hurt. And she can’t tell Sydney because it would break her heart. Sometimes when Eulalia thinks about her mother’s life she wants to cry. Sometimes she actually does cry. When she sees pictures of her mother as a baby, as a toddler, as a little girl who just lost her own mother, the breath gets caught in her throat. She can’t add to Sydney’s pain. She’s contributed too much to it already. 

So she says nothing as they buy two big slices of coffee cake, settling onto a huge, squashy couch with their plates in their hands.

“You wanna talk about it?” Sydney asks. 

Eulalia presses the prongs of the fork into the cream cheese icing. “It’s nothing,” she lies, “honestly, I’m probably - I think I’m just premenstrual or something.” 

Sydney regards her with a long, hard look that makes Eulalia’s cheeks burn. 

“Sure,” she says, sounding unconvinced. “You know, it’s funny. You’re older than my mom was when she died. Older than I was when I had you.”

“I know, Mom,” Eulalia says quietly. “I’m sorry.” 

She’s not even sure what she’s apologising for. She’s sorry for crying over plates, of all things. She’s sorry she’s not independent enough to do it alone, she’s sorry her mom needs to hold her hand all the time. She’s sorry she was the other woman in some sad British marital drama, she’s sorry she got conned out of her inheritance. She’s sorry she isn’t Carmen’s biological child. She’s sorry she was born at all.  

“Sorry for what?” Sydney asks, sipping her coffee.

“For everything,” Eulalia says, her eyes prickling with tears. Sydney’s face softens, the corners of her lips turn down. 

“Baby,” she says. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.” 

“I feel like I do,” Eulalia can’t stop the words coming out of her mouth, everything spilling from the hole in her heart. “I feel like - I don’t know, didn’t I kind of ruin your life?” 

Her mother’s eyebrows shoot up her face, her nostrils flare like she’s mad, and when she speaks, it’s harsh and clear. “Do I look like a woman with a ruined life?”

A tear drops onto Eulalia’s nose, her mother’s nose, her grandmother’s nose. She sniffs and dashes it with a trembling hand. 

“No,” she says, small. 

“Eulalia,” Sydney says, chewing her lip, “you know I was… fuck it, I was an accident too, right? Like, my mom was twenty-two, and broke, and her and Pop had a shotgun wedding at City Hall, and my grandparents were weird about it. And I always used to think, like, she had all these ambitions, she had all these things she wanted to achieve. She wanted to act, she was in plays, she had a ton of artsy friends and none of them had kids. And I always wonder, like, if she hadn’t had me when she did, would she have lived longer? Would she have been able to do all the shit she wanted to do? Because like, if her dreams came true, I wouldn’t exist. I wasn’t - I wasn’t what she wanted the most. I know that my dad, like, loved her and wanted a family with her before they were even together and I know that I’m his dream come true, but my mom? I wasn’t even a thought in her head.” 

Eulalia’s heart is thumping so hard she can feel it in her ears. 

“You really think that?” she asks. “Even now?”

Sydney nods.

“All the time,” she says softly. 

Eulalia sniffles. Her stomach’s churning, her hands trembling, the fork rattling against the plate. She lays it down, and turns to her mother. 

“I just - I love you so much, Mom,” she says, because it’s really as simple as that. Sydney’s arms open, and Eulalia buries herself in them. 

“I don’t know what kind of life I’d have if I hadn’t had you,” Sydney mumbles into Eulalia’s hair. “But it wouldn’t be better or worse. It would just be different. That’s all. You’re here, and I’m here, and it doesn’t matter, baby.” 

It’s chilly, the day she gets coffee with Danny Allen. Spring has come to the rest of America, but in Chicago, Eulalia’s still wearing her puffer jacket. She tells her parents she’s getting lunch with her cousin Sophia, who works at Motorola. She tells Sophia she’s getting lunch with Jyoti and she tells Jyoti - well, she tells Jyoti the truth over a Coke and a hot dog, the two of them sitting by the river, the sun low in the sky and Chicago the best city on earth. 

“Maybe he’s sick,” Jyoti suggests, and Eulalia wrinkles her nose. 

“I hope not,” she says, “I don’t want to give him my kidney, I barely know the guy.” 

“Maybe he’s dying,” Jyoti continues through a mouthful of frankfurter, “maybe he’s got six months to live and he’s trying to make amends.” 

“Well, I don’t know if I really want him to make amends,” Eulalia says. “I’ve got a Dad. I like my Dad. If anything, I should be thanking him. Thank you for being a piece of shit, I got a pretty good deal out of it.” 

“You should open with that,” says Jyoti, “but maybe don’t call him a piece of shit straight out the gate. Like, maybe work up to it.”

“What would you call a guy who gets a girl pregnant and then never calls?” 

Jyoti just laughs. “You want me to come with you?”

“What, when I meet him?” 

Jyoti nods. Eulalia sighs and looks out over the water. It’s really beautiful here, she thinks. I got really lucky. 

“I don’t know,” she says, “I think… I think this might be something I have to do by myself. But, y’know, he text me the other day and he was like, oh, bring your mom.”

Jyoti snorts. “Oh, sure, because that’ll make it less awkward.” 

“Right!” Eulalia takes a glug of Coke, tries to picture her mother twenty-five years ago, walking along this very river, tottering along in heels to meet a man and change her life. “I don’t think he knows, like, how much I know. Like, I know a lot.”

“Some might say maybe even too much,” Jyoti says. “I don’t think a person should know the details of their own conception. I think it fucks with your sense of self.”

Eulalia considers this. “I guess,” she says, “but like, the fact he didn’t pay for her Uber or he blocked her number, like, those things don’t actually have anything to do with me. And I know this. Like, objectively I know this. But I don’t know, man, I sort of feel like it does have something to do with me.” 

Jyoti sips her Coke and hums, weighing up Eulalia’s words. It’s one of the many things Eulalia loves about her, how smart she is, how she thinks before she speaks. 

“I think,” Jyoti says slowly, “that it’s okay for it to be like, a building block of you. Because it is. But it’s not the be all and end all. It doesn’t - it’s like, okay, this isn’t the same, and I’m not saying it’s the same at all, but it’s kind of like, how I’m Indian and I’m Konkani but I’m also American and I’m also from Kansas. Like who we are isn’t one thing, ever. You’re able to do that with so much of yourself already. You’re a sister, you’re a cousin, you’re a daughter, you’re Nigerian, you’re Italian, you’re from Chicago - this is just another part of who you are. Am I making sense?”

“I mean, I’m not actually Italian,” Eulalia says, and Jyoti scoffs.

“Sure,” she says, “I’ll come with you if you want, and if you want me to wait around the corner until you’re done, that’s fine too. You just say the word.” 

Eulalia doesn’t say anything for a little bit. She’s so grateful for Jyoti. She’s so lucky she could fall down, and Jyoti was right there when she got back up. She puts her arms around her shoulders and squeezes.

“I love you, man,” she says, “I don’t tell you enough.” 

“Shut up,” Jyoti laughs, and squeezes her back. 

So it’s chilly, and Eulalia’s on her own, and she realises she’s not even really sure who she’s looking for. His profile pictures online are not great, which Eulalia considers to be embarrassing for a millennial-zoomer cusp. Carmen’s chronically offline and even he has a very nice photograph of him and Sydney at Emmy’s high school graduation as his profile picture, everywhere. They even published it in Food and Wine . 

Danny Allen’s Instagram is just pictures of fish he’s caught. The top of his head is sometimes visible. He’s got a full head of hair, so that’s something. She’d be embarrassed for Sydney if it turned out her biological father was a bald guy. 

So, she’s looking for a tall white guy who kind of looks like her. If he even looks like her. People always say she looks like her mother, which Eulalia often thinks is a way of sidestepping the fact she looks nothing like Carmen. They can’t really mean it. Sydney’s so beautiful. 

She stands outside the Starbucks and shivers, even in her coat. Her phone buzzes - Sydney’s in the group chat, asking if someone can pick the baby up from school later. Emmy replies in the same minute, saying no, she can’t, she’s in New York, which is a joke she makes every time. It gets a laugh reaction from Carmen every time. Eulalia starts to type that she might be able to, depending how long this takes, and then she feels sick at the thought of having to explain what this is, so she deletes it, leaves it, and feels bad about it. 

“Eulalia?” 

She glances up. A large man, tall and broad, stands in front of her, blocking the sun and throwing her in shadow. The cut of his suit is awkward in a way that would make her sister wince and his fair hair is thinning. Not everything you see online is true, Eulalia thinks. She knows instantly who he is - their eyes are the same shape. Unsure what the correct protocol is, Eulalia sticks out her hand for him to shake. 

“Hi,” she says, her intonation bright and cheery. She kind of feels like she’s at a job interview. “You must be Danny, hi.” 

He seems a little taken aback but he takes her hand in his anyway. His palms are clammy. 

“Hi,” he says. For a moment they just stand there awkwardly, and then Eulalia gestures to the Starbucks. 

“Shall we?” 

“Oh, sure, yeah,” he says, and follows her in. It’s kind of busy for a random Tuesday morning in April. She wonders if anyone else in the building is meeting their biological father for the first time. 

“You come far?” Eulalia asks as they hover in line. She wonders what relationship the barista thinks they have - if it’s a business meeting, or maybe, horrifyingly, some kind of date. Is the resemblance between them obvious enough that they’re clearly father and daughter? Or maybe it’s vague, and the barista’s assuming he’s her distant uncle, taking his niece out for lunch in the big city. And then Eulalia remembers that she’s been a waitress and a server and a line cook in an open kitchen, and no one gives a shit about any of that. She’s just an order, and it doesn’t matter. 

“Uh, just from Glencoe.” 

“Right.” 

“You?” 

“The restaurant’s in the Loop, so not far,” she says as the woman in front of her moves aside, and she says to the bored teen behind the counter: “could I get, um, just like, a matcha latte with oat milk? Thank you.” 

She can feel Danny Allen’s eyes on her, just staring. Every second feels heavy. His eyes are pale and watery. It occurs to her that he sort of looks like her dad, but, like, a boring version. Like someone described her dad poorly. She almost laughs. 

“I’ll get this,” Danny Allen says, and taps his card before she can say anything. 

“Oh,” Eulalia says, “um, thank you.” 

He orders a black coffee and they shuffle off to the side, watching the barista through the steam. Neither of them say anything until they’ve got their little trays in hand. 

“You wanna sit by the window?” Danny Allen asks. Eulalia shrugs. 

“Sure,” she says, and so they sit by the window. The fear that someone she knows - Sophia, or Louie, or Eva, or a Fak, or Bea on a free period - will walk past and see them clenches her stomach. Maybe she’ll tell them it’s an investor, or a reporter, or a contractor. How would they know? It’s not like any of them knew Sydney when she knew Danny Allen. She assumes Sophia must know Carmen is not Eulalia’s biological father, the same way she knows that Natalie and Carmen’s father died when they were kids, or that Richie and Tiff used to be married. All families come with a history, and in some families, you have to run to keep up with it. 

“This is great coffee,” Danny Allen says, and Eulalia struggles not to laugh. It’s not great coffee. She takes a sip of her latte, but it doesn’t taste like anything. 

“You think we look alike?” Danny Allen asks. 

“Um,” Eulalia says, unsure of what to say, “I don’t know - well, people, a lot of people say I look like my mom, so…”

“You do,” he nods. He pauses, takes another sip of his coffee with a sigh of satisfaction. It’s a real, classic Dad move. It occurs to her that he might have other children. “How is, uh, Sydney?” 

He says it carefully, which makes Eulalia laugh. It’s okay, she wants to say, I know you were an asshole. 

“She’s fine,” is what she says instead. “Busy. With the restaurant and all.” 

“Yeah.” Danny Allen keeps nodding, and Eulalia feels dizzy watching him. “I think it’s great, what you’re all doing.”

“Thanks.”

She should probably invite him to the restaurant, tell him there’ll always be a table for him. But she doesn’t want to, so she doesn’t. 

He doesn’t say anything, just nods more. It’s making her itch. Someone’s just gotta come out and say it. 

“Do you, like, want something?” Eulalia asks, leaning forward. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Do you need my kidney?” 

He blinks, seemingly stunned. It occurs to her, in a faraway way, that Carmen would’ve laughed at that. When she tells Carmen about this, whenever that is, he will laugh. 

“Or are you doing the Twelve Steps?” Eulalia presses. “I just - I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve never - after twenty-five years, you want to get coffee?”

“Yeah,” he says, “okay, I guess I deserve that.”

Eulalia doesn’t say anything. 

“I was super young when your mom got pregnant,” Danny Allen says, as if that answers her question. She doesn’t even know if that’s true - she doesn’t know how old he is.

“How young?” 

“I don’t know, like, twenty-eight.”

Sydney was twenty-four when Eulalia was born. Carmen was twenty-seven. The first Eulalia had been twenty-two when she had Sydney, and twenty-six when she died, making Emmanuel a single father at the same age. 

“Sure,” Eulalia says, “yeah, okay.”

“Sydney and I barely knew each other,” he continues, “I didn’t know what to do. And I want… I think a person should know where they come from.”

Eulalia takes him in. He’s hulking in a way she didn’t expect, broad-shouldered. His face is simple, like a child’s drawing of a man. She imagines him twenty-five years younger. She tries to picture her mom dressing up to go and meet him, laughing loudly at his jokes in a Dave & Buster’s. She can’t see it. 

“That’s very nice of you and all,” she says, “but I know where I come from.”

“Well,” he says, “yeah, but like, not really.” 

Her mother’s daughter, she can’t help herself from pulling a face. “The fuck does that mean?” 

“Well, did you know you’re one sixteenth Irish?” 

She can’t help it - she splutters with laughter, but he’s dead serious. 

“Oh,” she says, “oh. Um, I did not know that. Thank you for telling me, I think.” 

“English and Scottish too,” he says, like she should be pleased about that. “My wife and I did, uh, you know, that genealogy tracing thing. She’s Scandinavian, mostly. A little French thrown in there. A real mix.”

Eulalia nods, and starts compiling a text to Jyoti in her head. “You Italian?” she asks. 

“God, no,” Danny Allen says. Eulalia laughs. 

Danny Allen kind of squints at her, like he can’t work her out. 

“So, um, you have a wife?” she says. She tries to picture this woman, Danny Allen’s wife. Her stepmother. How weird. 

“Yeah,” Danny Allen smiles, “and we have, uh, two beautiful boys. Your brothers.” 

Mr Allen, she wants to say, I already have a brother. His name’s Carmen. But she figures that’s kind of rude, and she leans across the table when he digs his phone out to show her pictures of white, blonde, leggy children, children that mean nothing to her. They could be stock photos he saved from Google Images. 

When she thinks of the baby, she thinks of the smell of him, thinks of his soft head and the way his wet hair stuck to his forehead when you gave him a bath. She thinks of the music he likes, the art he makes, the way their mom calls him Basquiat. She knows that these kids, these Allen children, probably smelled the same when they were babies, probably have little quirks and hobbies and nicknames, but she wasn’t there for any of that. They’re not hers like the baby is. 

“Big sports fans,” Danny Allen says, “you like hockey? We got a box at the Blackhawks for Jamie’s birthday.” 

So one of her brothers is called Jamie. She tries it out in her head. My brother Jamie. It doesn’t sound right. It doesn’t feel right. 

She wonders, if Danny Allen had had a say in her name, what would it be? Carmen always says it’s a pretty name. He says it’s like music. Maybe Danny Allen would’ve relegated Eulalia to her middle name. Maybe she’d have been called Olivia or Aria or Ava. 

She likes being Eulalia. She likes forcing people to pronounce every syllable, not letting anyone who isn’t family shorten it. She likes knowing that every time someone says her name, they’re saying her grandmother’s name too. She likes that her middle name is her mother’s name. 

She imagines a girl in the future, the daughter of the daughter of her own daughter, writing their names down, one after the other. 

Eulalia St Catherine Deschamps. Sydney Marie Adamu. Eulalia Sydney Adamu Berzatto.  

Danny Allen won’t even be a footnote. 

Eulalia, Sydney, Eulalia. 

Maybe if she has a daughter, she’ll name her Sydney. It’s only fair.

“Basketball,” she says, “I got a Sky season ticket.” 

“Oh,” Danny Allen says, “uh, good for you.”

Neither of them speak, they just sip their drinks in silence.

“I, uh, I have something for you,” Danny Allen says, rifling through his jacket pockets. Eulalia frowns, unsure what he’s up to. She hopes it’s not a gun or porn or drugs or something. She breathes a sigh of relief when she realises it’s paper, crumpled and aged. An official looking letter on headed paper and two pages of childish crayon scrawls. Is one of his kids in Mensa or something? He lays the papers out on the table, smoothes them as flat as they can go. 

“Obviously, you were, uh, born in the pandemic,” he says, “and, uh, I didn’t really - I had some things I had to work out. And then in, uh, I think it was ‘24 or ‘25, I get this letter in the mail, right? From this fancy lawyer - ” 

He pushes the paper towards her, and she spots the signatures on the bottom of the page, familiar and beloved. Her mom’s hand, her dad’s. The gold type shining on the letterhead read KBL. 

“They asked me to give up my parental rights,” Danny Allen says, “they said legally, for Carmen Berzatto to adopt you, I had to give up my rights and give the okay. Frankly, I was stunned that I even had any rights. But I did, and they sent me this letter asking me to sign a statement, and they sent these, uh, these observations from a social worker, about what you were like, and these, um, these pictures.” 

Eulalia’s eyes feel heavy as she reads through the letter Uncle Jimmy had sent to Danny Allen. 

Mr Berzatto has been in Eulalia’s life since she was fifteen months old. She knows no other father. As you can see from the observations made by the Cook County assigned social worker, she is a happy little girl who loves her parents very much.

There’s a subtly menacing comment referencing the fact Sydney never chased Danny Allen for child support that Eulalia can hear in Uncle Jimmy’s voice. She strokes the signatures of her parents with a trembling hand, and moves on to the next page. 

Eulalia is a happy and healthy little girl, the social worker had written, who is growing up in a secure and loving environment. Eulalia is very excited to see her Mommy and Daddy get married. Eulalia tells us her Mommy and Daddy are her best friends. Eulalia enjoys music, particularly Beyoncé, cooking, and drawing. Eulalia has an extended family of cousins, aunts and uncles, all of whom have given evidence that Carmen Berzatto is a caring father to Eulalia. Eulalia tells us that when she grows up, she’s going to cook with her Mommy and Daddy. When we asked Eulalia where she feels the safest and happiest, she said she feels happiest in the kitchen and safest when she is with her parents. We see no reason why Carmen Berzatto should not legally adopt Eulalia Sydney Adamu, and we highly recommend that this adoption is approved in order to legally cement the family environment Eulalia is already happily living in. 

Beyoncé, cooking, and drawing… she laughs. No change there, then. She can feel a tear forming in the corner of her eyes, and she does nothing to stop it. She doesn’t care about Danny Allen. He can see her cry - he’s probably never going to see her again. All this time, she thinks, all this time she thought her bones were someone else’s. She’s been Carmen’s baby her whole life. She remembers what he said to her, years ago, when the baby was still a real baby. Like Jesus was Joseph’s. 

She sniffles, and looks at the pictures she drew. There are little captions, penned by an unfamiliar hand. The social worker, maybe, or the judge. She’d forgotten about the judge. 

Mommy and Daddy in the kitchen. Me and Mommy and Daddy cooking pot au feu. Me and Mommy and Daddy and my baby sister who is growing in Mommy’s tummy. Mommy and Daddy getting married. Mommy and Daddy winning a Michelin star.  

That makes her splutter with laughter. 

She’d drawn the star, high in the sky above the potato-shaped figures of her family, yellow crayon pushed so hard into the paper it left dents in it. 

She looks up at Danny Allen. There’s nothing wrong with him, she thinks, and she’s glad about that. But he’s not her dad. They could, if they tried hard enough, hammer out something that resembled a relationship. Maybe she can go out to Glencoe for a family barbecue, and meet her Blackhawks fan little white half-brothers. But if she doesn’t, that’s okay. It's funny how life works out.

It's like a weight’s been lifted from her, and she feels cool and clear for the first time in her life. It’s as though she’s just emerged from the lake on the hottest day of the year. She knows now. 

“Danny,” she says, “thank you for the coffee. And thank you for calling me. This has been really nice. I really mean that. And I’m not mad at you. For any of it. Well, not paying for the Uber’s a dick move, but - the thing is, I have to go. I’ve gotta talk to my mom and dad. If you’re ever in the city, come to The Bear. It’s a family restaurant.”

Her parents are in the kitchen of The Bear. Where else would they be? Sydney’s dicing onions, Carmen’s grating garlic. For a moment Eulalia just stands there in the doorway, watching them, letting how much she loves them fill up her whole heart. Her mother says something, too quiet for Eulalia to hear, and her father laughs, and nudges her shoulder with his own. He’s always touching her. When she was a child, Eulalia thought everyone’s parents were like that, putting their hands on each other and kissing and talking in a language even their children don’t fully understand. It was only when she got older she realized how untrue that was. She’s lucky, she knows that now. Most people are planted in dust and expected to grow. 

Her father notices her first, dusts his hands off and ambles towards her. She’s taller than him. 

“Thought you were getting lunch with Soph,” he says, hugging her. Eulalia wants to cling to him like she used to when she was a little girl. She squeezes him tight, trying to let him know without words how much she loves him, how grateful she is. 

“No,” she says, muffled into him, “I just went out for coffee.” 

“Have you eaten, baby?” Sydney says over her shoulder, “We’re doing spaghetti.” 

“Yes, please,” Eulalia says, arms still wrapped around her father. “I‘m starving.” 

“Thought you were going to that Riverwalk place?” Carmen asks. He kisses her cheek, just so, and extracts himself. 

“Oh, no,” Eulalia says, and then she trails off, not sure how to finish the sentence. She has to tell them. She’s just not sure how. 

Sydney, who is still dicing, whistles, long and low. “I’m sorry, Sophia has Riverwalk money? How much is Motorola paying these days? I might make a late in life career pivot.” 

“Late in life?” Carmen scoffs. “You’re not even fifty.” 

Eulalia’s stomach churns. She might as well just say it. 

“Uh, I didn’t go to Riverwalk with Soph,” she says. “I got coffee with, um, Danny Allen?” 

Sydney says: “Who?” 

Eulalia glances over at Carmen, watches the realization dawn on his face. 

“You know,” Eulalia says, “Danny Allen, my biological father.” 

She’s not sure what she’s expecting Sydney to do. The knife clatters against the chopping board. 

“Are you okay?” Carmen asks Eulalia gently. Gratitude rushes through her like adrenaline. 

“Yeah,” she says, “I’m okay.” 

Eulalia watches her mother’s face, trying to tell if she’s angry or hurt or confused. But Sydney’s kind of unreadable, in the way she gets sometimes. Like a wall’s gone up. 

“You wanna help me peel this garlic?” Carmen says, gesturing to the cloves. Eulalia’s reminded of being six again, when tears were quelled by the steady rhythm of the kitchen, when bad days could be fixed with some tinned tomatoes and fresh sheets of pasta. She smiles at him, and begins peeling. 

“Can I just ask,” Sydney says, “and I’m not mad but I’m just - like, did you look for him? Have you been looking for him? Because you never said anything.”

She scrunches her hands in a dish cloth and leans back against the stainless steel counter, arms folded. Eulalia’s hands still. 

“He called me,” Eulalia says, aware of her dad beside her, his chin in his hand, “I didn’t - honestly, I don’t think about him. He read my interview in the Trib and he called me and asked me if I wanted to meet. He, uh, asked if you wanted to come too.”

“Oh, did he?” Carmen mutters. Sydney rolls her eyes.

“Carm,” she says, “c’mon, man.” 

She looks kind of pleased though, the same way she does when Carmen compliments her cooking, even now after all these years. Sometimes Eulalia can see the girl in her mother, shining out through her eyes.

“But I said I thought it would be weird,” Eulalia says.

“Yeah, you got that right,” Carmen says. 

Sydney laughs. “You know we’re, like, married, right?” 

Eulalia barrels on, ignoring the heavy looks passing between her parents. “And we’ve been so busy with the restaurant, and I just thought it would be, like, a lot, to be like, oh by the way my biological father wants to hang out. I didn’t want to upset you.”

“Oh, baby,” Sydney sighs, “you’ve been carrying all that around by yourself?”

“I figured I’ve given you enough trouble.”

“No such thing,” Carmen says quietly. 

He puts his hand on her shoulder and squeezes tenderly. Eulalia’s eyes prickle with tears. 

“I have two, uh, white half-brothers,” she says, trying to keep her voice steady, “they’re about the same age as the baby.” 

“That’s… nice,” says Sydney, a little awkwardly. 

“Yeah. I don’t really - I think, um, I don’t think I’ll see him again,” Eulalia says, and she starts to bite at her thumbnail, her old habit. Her father lets go of her shoulder, takes the offending hand in his, like he used to when she was little. “Like, I was sitting there, looking at him, and I just - I just wanted to be here. With you. Because, um, I really love you guys, and I’m so - I’m so lucky, I think. To be your daughter. I’m sorry if I haven’t always acted like it.”

Her mother’s face crumples. The wall falls down.  

“We really love you, Eulalia,” Sydney says thickly. 

“I know,” Eulalia says, and she laughs a little damp laugh. “I think I know now more than ever.”

“What’d he say?” Carmen asks. 

“Oh, just that he was young and stupid and he, uh, he showed me the letters he got sent when you - when you guys got married and Dad adopted me, the ones your lawyers - ” 

“Uncle Jimmy’s lawyers.”

“Ha. Uncle Jimmy’s lawyers sent him this statement about me. Like from a social worker or something?” 

“Yeah, they visited the apartment,” Sydney says, clearing her throat. “It was scary as fuck, they had these little clipboards and they kept talking about how unsociable our working hours were.”

“Do you remember it?” Carmen asks, “They, uh, asked you a lot of questions.”

Eulalia shakes her head. “No. I remember the judge though. She called me Miss Berzatto.”

“Yeah,” her dad smiles, “nice lady.”

“She’s dead now,” Sydney says, and Eulalia and Carmen both snort with laughter in the exact same way, their heads ducked and their hands on their mouths. Sydney laughs too, loud and gummy, all her teeth showing. Eulalia laughs so hard it hurts, giddy and light as a feather. She’s got nothing to worry about. 

“For fuck’s sake,” she says eventually through hiccups, “I’m trying to have a moment here!”

“Sorry, baby,” says Sydney, “please, have your moment. We’re listening.”

Carmen squeezes Eulalia’s hand gently and lets her go. He moves over to Sydney, drapes an arm over her shoulders. Sydney smiles at him, kisses him softly. Eulalia wonders what their eyes are saying to each other. She thinks she knows. 

“I guess,” Eulalia takes a shuddery breath, “I guess I just wanted to say that I really love you guys. And I’m so excited to do this with you. And it could fail miserably, or it could not. It doesn’t really matter, ‘cause what matters is we’re together. So, y’know. Let it rip.”