We haven’t discussed our last fight or apologized to each other. We just pushed things under the rug. So I’ll tell her I’m attending review sessions, instead of the truth—that I’m learning to bake so I can help her. This way, we won’t fight like that again.

“It went fine. And, yes, it will be weekly,” I say.

She smiles, and it’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen in so long. I smile back, that painful lump swelling in my throat. Mom goes back to rummaging in the pantry.

Without Grandma to mediate things, lying has become the only bridge between us.

18

TUESDAY, MAY 3

The next day, I sit doing homework at Salt after dinner.

Some customers are at the counter, too, absentmindedly dipping buttered tapioca beijus in their coffee, catching the evening news on the TV perched on the wall. The newscaster drones on about more rain and flooded roads. The wet season is starting early this year, he says, with record-breaking rains setting off mudslides.

Mom catches me looking at the screen.

“Focus on your homework,” she says, looking over my shoulder at the lab report I’ve just finished. She shakes her head. “If you had a computer, it would look so much better, wouldn’t it? This is very disorganized. You should staple these notes.”

I shrug. “I think it looks fine.”

“No. Go get these pages stapled. Your grandmother kept a stapler in the office.”

She waits until I get up and drag my feet all the way around the counter and into Grandma’s old office.

“Mom?” I call out, looking through the things on the desk. “Where is it?”

“On her desk!” Mom answers from the bakery.

The surface is covered in cookbooks. No stapler here. But I don’t want to push it and tell Mom I couldn’t find it. She’ll just march in here and find it sitting in plain sight with her mom magic. I’ll get in even more trouble.

I plop down in the office chair. There’s the faintest perfume in the air, like citrus, rose, and...tomatoes. I smile to myself, thinking of how Grandma sometimes smelled like tomato sauce after a long day in the kitchen.

“Have you found it?” Mom shouts from outside, startling me.

“Still looking!”

I open up a drawer in a hurry, and a ton of bills pop out like a jack-in-the-box. When I reach to pick them off the floor, I realize one is a disconnection notice, the electricity company threatening to shut off our power if we don’t pay by the end of June.

“The stapler is on the—” Mom begins to say, her voice sounding much closer than before.

I don’t have time to hide the bills. Mom walks up to me and calmly gathers everything, then stuffs them back into the drawer.

“Mom, is everything okay? These bills. There’s a disconnection notice.”