The smell of sugar in the air is so heavy that the speech I had ready for his family dies on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t even know he was in town. No one has seen him in about two weeks, gone who knows where.

He looks like he can’t believe what happened, and just as our eyes lock, his expression hardens with ice.

“Get off me.” His voice is equally cold.

I scramble to push myself away from him, but there’s too much icing on the sidewalk. My feet slip and I come crashing down again against Pedro’s chest, our faces so close that I smell the dizzying, sweet scent of frosting in his hair. His eyes widen.

Hands grab me by the armpits to hoist me up, and Mom’s high-pitched shouting echoes in the background. “Don’t touch my daughter! DON’T. TOUCH. HER!”

“Your girl ruined the cake!” Dona Eulalia barks at Mom.

“It was an accident,” I try to explain, but no one’s listening to me.

Mom comes running from Salt like a hurricane ready to destroy anyone—anything—near me. When she pulls me away from the chaos, there’s a raw fire in her eyes like I’ve never seen before. I’m stunned. She’s never looked more like Grandma than she does now.

“Are you hurt?” Her fretful eyes look me up and down.

“I’m—I’m fine,” I stammer. Covered in cake, I’m sure I don’t look convincing.

Mom starts steering me across the street, and I realize that the customers who were at Salt and Sugar have already stepped out to watch the scene unfold.

“Your daughter destroyed the cake on purpose!” Dona Eulalia shouts after Mom. We turn as she strides toward us. “Aren’t you going to do something about this?” She unfastens her apron and throws it dramatically at Mom’s feet, but it lands on the rain-washed cobblestones.

Dogs begin barking from inside houses up and down the street.

“I swear I didn’t do this on purpose,” I try again, looking from Mom to Dona Eulalia. “I didn’t even see the cake until the last second.”

“It was a three-tiered cake!” Dona Eulalia snarls, raindrops glistening like dew on her hair.

“If my daughter says it was an accident, it was an accident. Ponto final,” Mom says.

In the background, I see some bakers dig up Pedro from underneath the pile of cake. He has his back to me when he gets on his feet, and the moment he steadies himself on the slippery sidewalk, he marches straight into Sugar.

Mom tries to take me home again, but Dona Eulalia doesn’t look like she’ll let us walk away from her so easily. This woman is always in the mood for arguing in the middle of the street. It’s like she sees the whole neighborhood as her stage.