Chapter 14 - The Last Letter From My Sister
I did not spend Sofia’s money.
Not immediately.
I framed the first statement.
Dominic thought that was weird.
He wasn’t wrong.
Months passed.
Culinary school exhausted me in ways mafia family politics somehow had not.
Knives.
Sauces.
Timing.
Chefs who could reduce grown adults to silence by lifting one eyebrow.
I loved it.
For the first time, failure felt ordinary.
Burn a reduction?
Make another.
Overcook fish?
Learn.
No one died.
No inheritance changed hands.
No secret relative appeared.
Usually.
Leo grew.
He stopped calling me Lina for a while and started calling every woman with dark hair “Lina.”
Dominic found this hilarious.
I did not.
Eventually I became “Aunt Lina.”
That one stayed.
The explanation for his first reaction to me became clearer too.
Sofia had shown him photographs of me.
She had worn the matching medallion.
My voice apparently carried the same cadence as hers.
And we shared an old lullaby.
Rosa had sung it to me.
Elena had sung it to both twins in the hospital.
One evening, when Leo was feverish and refusing sleep, I hummed it without thinking.
Dominic froze in the doorway.
“Sofia sang that.”
I almost stopped.
He shook his head.
“Don’t.”
So I continued.
Leo fell asleep against my shoulder.
Grief can sit beside love without either one replacing the other.
I learned that from him.
Near graduation, I returned to the Maine house alone.
Almost alone.
Dominic drove me.
Then waited outside because I asked for ten minutes.
Inside the cedar box was one envelope I had avoided opening.
Sofia’s final letter.
This one was dated forty-eight hours before her death.
Alina,
I think I know who is following me.
If I’m right, I’m going to turn everything over tomorrow.
I wish I had been braver sooner.
Then:
I keep imagining what you’ll think of me.
Maybe you’ll hate that I watched you without speaking.
You’d be entitled to.
I didn’t hate her.
I hated time.
She wrote about Leo.
Dominic.
Elena.
Rosa.
Then came the line that finally made me put the page down.
Do not fall in love with my life because you lost the chance to have me in yours.
I understood.
Sofia did not want me replacing her.
Not with Dominic.
Not with Leo.
Not with the Bellinis.
She wanted me to build something that belonged to me.
I finished reading.
At the bottom:
If Aurelia is still serving that awful truffle pasta when you read this, please fix it.
I laughed so loudly Dominic opened the door.
“You okay?”
I held up the letter.
“She hated the pasta.”
He stared.
“She ordered it every time.”
“She was gathering evidence.”
“Against Victor?”
“No.”
I smiled through tears.
“Against the chef.”
Dominic laughed.
A real laugh.
Maybe the first I had heard from him.
Then he handed me an envelope.
My culinary-school graduation certificate had arrived early.
I stared at it.
“Congratulations, Chef Valdez.”
Not Bellini.
Valdez.
He remembered.
And when I walked outside, Leo was waiting in the car.
He pressed both palms against the window.
Reaching for me.
May you like
Again.
This time, I knew exactly why I was reaching back.
