Sofia shoves so hard with the rolling pin that her stretch of dough breaks in half and slips flatly off the counter and comes to rest at the feet of Saul, who has just walked in, who has just offered to help cook, if Sofia’s ears are working properly. He picks the dough up and hands it to her, and it is covered in bits of onion skin and herb stem that have slipped onto the floor. Rosa snatches the dough from Sofia’s hands and says something like never get all this out in time, and begins to tweeze the bread crumbs and chili flakes off of the once-velvety pasta dough. “Sorry, Mamma,” mutters Sofia. And then she looks at Saul and before she can stop herself says, “I think you’ve helped enough,” and Saul looks stricken, and retreats into the living room. Sofia’s stomach lurches. What’s wrong with you? she berates herself. Why are you like this?

“That one’s a little odd, don’t you think?” asks Rosa. “Offering to cook?”

“Sofia likes him,” says Frankie. “Look how red her face is.”

“I do not!” Sofia nearly shouts. Frankie is still shorter than Sofia, but she meets Sofia’s angry face with a fearless, almost undetectable wink. Sofia wants to throttle her.

“I think he’s Jewish,” says Rosa, as though that settled that. Rosa knows he is Jewish, but this is her way: to present facts as questions. And, Sofia thinks, rolling out the un-ruined half of the ravioli dough, to present herself as a question. Rosa knows more than everyone in any room combined, but you’d never know it from the way she speaks. Offering to cook? There is something simpering about Rosa’s tone, something that makes Sofia want to take a wrecking ball to her family home. I think he’s Jewish—as if everyone else in the room will also adhere to whatever invisible, unbreakable rule Rosa invokes. Sofia spends the rest of the afternoon fuming, trying not to meet Frankie’s probing eyes.

Later, when Sofia has washed her face and hands and changed out of her apron and smoothed down her hair, she slips into the living room to find Frankie squeezing herself into the empty chair beside Rosa. “There’s one over there,” Frankie says, nodding toward the chair across from Saul, who is sipping wine and wearing a brown vest and round glasses and whose hair is curling into his face so that Sofia wants desperately to run her fingers across his forehead and brush it away.

“Frankie, please,” says Sofia to Frankie, who turns placidly away as if she does not hear Sofia.

So Sofia finds herself sliding down into the chair at the end of the table, across from Saul, who looks up and says, “Hello again.”