“We’re forgetting the true reason why we’re here,” Dona Eulalia says. “Pedro worked hard on fixing that wedding cake with the client’s last-minute demands! It was a beautiful cake, Father. The Ramires girl marched straight to it!”

“Why did Pedro try to carry out the layers assembled,” Seu Romário says, “despite the specific instructions I left to wheel them out separately?”

Pedro’s face looks pinched. I can’t believe he just got called out in front of us. “The driver was late and I was trying my best to hurry the order out the door.”

“Excuses,” his grandfather retorts, and the tips of Pedro’s ears, sticking out from under a mat of cake-covered hair, turn bright red. “Always the same excuses. When are you going to learn to follow my instructions?”

“Grandpa—I mean, Chef, I didn’t mean to—”

“I’m not going to argue with you now.” Seu Romário makes an impatient hand gesture. “Eulalia, Pedro, leave me alone to speak with the Ramires.”

Pedro is out the door in the blink of an eye, but Dona Eulalia lingers.

“Father, I thought we agreed that it would be better if Pedro and I—”

“Leave.”

She obeys, although not before one last nasty look at us. And the moment she’s gone, it’s like witnessing a magic veil come off. Seu Romário’s shoulders hunch, like he’d been trying to seem stronger in front of his family.

“Now that we can talk privately,” his voice cracks, “I’d like to express my deepest... My most... Alice, your mother—she was—she didn’t deserve to go like that.”

A painful sob swells in my throat, threatening to escape. I can’t believe I’m about to cry in front of him. I can’t believe I’m about to let myself melt, when all I want... All I want...

I want to scream at him.

I want to ask him why he was so cruel to Grandma all these years.

I want to blame him for every single time he made her cry.

But, I can’t.

I can’t yell at Seu Romário, not when he has tears in his eyes.

“I know we’ve had our differences, but, believe me—” He pulls a handkerchief out of his shirt pocket and wipes his eyes. “Believe me how I regret that Julieta—that she—”

His shoulders shake like a trembling mountain, threatening to crumble, and I look to Mom. Her lips are pressed tightly together while her face turns redder and redder. Her nostrils flare out with every breath she takes, sounding like she’s starting to hyperventilate.

“You hated my mother,” Mom says, her voice raspy with all her barely contained anger.