He’s so not the type of person I’d picture Dona Eulalia marrying. I mean, she’s always tense and scowling at everyone. This man is laid-back, like he’d rather twist his hair into a messy bun than waste time brushing it.

Pedro looks at me. “That’s where I went.”

I notice the restaurant’s address. “Curitiba? You went all the way south?” I can’t hold back my surprise.

“When I told Grandpa about the Gastronomic Society, about wanting to apply to culinary school, I gave him an ultimatum,” he says. “I asked him for permission to start baking my recipes at Sugar. And if he didn’t think I was good enough, well, I said I didn’t think I could stay home anymore.” He laughs at himself, and it breaks my heart into one million pieces. “I actually thought he would have listened to me.”

“Pedro, I’m so sorry.”

He smiles like he’s trying to convince me that he’s okay, but all I can see is how sad he looks. How much pain he tries to hide with every smirk.

“My father left when I was a baby, and my mom and Grandpa talked about him like he was the plague... But what could I do? I couldn’t stay in Olinda. My father was all I had.” Pedro picks up a shell, hurling it at the ocean. A wave gobbles it up at once. “You know he actually doesn’t even see me as his son? It’s like I never existed. And still I went to him. How naive am I?”

“You’re not naive,” I tell him. “You hear me? Your father is the one at fault here.”

Without answering, Pedro stands up, nodding at me to follow. We kick off our shoes and walk alongside the water, dodging the waves when they get too close.

“I would have given everything up,” he says, looking out at the ocean. “Everything. If he’d said he was sorry, that he wanted to make up for all this time I didn’t get to grow up with him, I’d have stayed in Curitiba.” I hear the anguish in his voice, a self-loathing I’d never noticed before. “In the end, the only thing I got from him was his favorite sunglasses.”

“Sunglasses?”

“He let me wear them when we grilled outside,” he says with a coy smile. “I never returned them.” Pedro sits down on the sand again, looking defeated. I sit beside him.

“It’s okay to expect things from your father. You aren’t in the wrong for hoping he’d have been there for you.”

Pedro scoffs, staring ahead. “In the two weeks I stayed at his place, I actually realized that Dad and I aren’t too different.”

“Pedro, no.”