I picture the customers pressing their faces to the display window outside to look at quibes, pastéis, and codfish bolinhos. I listen for our old stereo alternating between static crackling and forró songs swelling with melancholy accordions. I search for the tangy scent of ground beef simmering in a clay pot ready to turn into coxinha filling. And all I find is...nothing. Just this sense of unfamiliarity within my own home that is dizzying, painful, and so, so lonely.

“We’re reopening tonight,” Mom announces. “Your grandmother worked every day, until she couldn’t anymore.”

She’s still facing the recipe.

“I think you should rest,” I say.

I’ve dreamed and dreamed of the day we’d reopen. But Mom hasn’t slept in ages, and the dark circles under her eyes have deepened this past month.

“I looked for you everywhere,” she says, finally addressing my disappearing act earlier. “At the ceremony.”

Her voice is a little hoarse and it holds so much disappointment, guilt shoots through my chest like a knife.

I should apologize, and I want to apologize, but how do I tell her that it hurt more than anything to see Grandma in that coffin? That I hardly recognized the person I loved—love—the most? My brain kept telling me, yes, it’s her. She’s nestled in a bed of sunflowers, so that’s her. These are her favorite flowers, so that’s her. But my heart kept shouting, That’s not Grandma. That can’t be Grandma. And before I knew it, I’d already left. I just turned around. I crossed the cemetery gates and kept going, hopping on the first bus home.

How do I tell her that?

I can’t.

So there’s just...silence between us.

Mom doesn’t ask again. She turns and heads into the kitchen, leaving me alone in the bakery.

I want to run upstairs and lock myself in my bedroom. I should change into black clothes. I went to the cemetery straight from school and there wasn’t time to change out of my uniform. The red-and-white-striped shirt and sweatpants feel wrong. Too happy.

But, if I’m honest, if I go, I’m not coming back downstairs.

I’ve done enough running away for today.

Instead, I pick up the stools off the counter and put them down on the floor to distract myself. When I’m done preparing Salt for customers, Mom’s cooking in full force.

The first smells of caramelized onions fried with garlic and ground cumin travel to me. They’d have been heavenly any other day. But, tonight, they only bring more heartache.