Chapter 4 - The First Impossible Breakfast Happens
On Monday morning, Luía arrived at seven instead of eight.
She did not tell Ricardo why.
At six-fifty the next morning, the mansion’s kitchen lights came on, and for the first time since Claris died, someone cooked without using the industrial stainless-steel appliances like museum pieces.
Luía found flour, eggs, milk, bananas, cinnamon, and a cast-iron skillet that looked as though it had not been touched in a year.
She made pancakes.
Not the thin Brazilian kind Claris used to make on Sundays, but thick American-style pancakes because she had once worked in a café near an international school and knew children sometimes trusted novelty more than memory.
She stacked them unevenly, added sliced bananas, and left the syrup unopened.
Then she cleaned the stove.
At seven-twenty, Beatriz appeared.
“What is that smell?”
“Breakfast.”
“We don’t eat together.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
Bianca emerged next. “Those look weird.”
“They are weird.”
“Are they poisoned?”
“Only with cinnamon.”
The twins sat.
By seven-thirty, Sofía was at the table too.
Laura came down with her hood pulled over her head and stood near the doorway, pretending she had only come for water.
Julia followed because she did not want to be upstairs alone.
Mariana was last.
She stopped on the staircase when she saw five sisters at the breakfast table.
“No,” she said.
Nobody answered.
“This is Mom’s thing.”
Luía kept washing a bowl.
“What is?”
“Sunday breakfast.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
Beatriz laughed with her mouth full.
Mariana glared at her. “Stop.”
The laughter vanished.
Luía turned off the water. “You don’t have to eat, Mariana.”
“I know.”
“You don’t have to sit.”
“I know.”
“You also don’t have to stop them.”
That was the match.
Mariana walked into the kitchen. “You come here with your cheap backpack and your psychology classes and think you know everything.”
Luía dried her hands.
“My backpack is cheap.”
“You think this is funny?”
“No.”
“Mom made breakfast every Sunday. She played Motown from her phone. Dad burned the bacon. Julia always stole the strawberries. Isabela sat in Mom’s lap.”
Each detail came faster than the last.
Mariana’s eyes filled with tears.
“And then Mom got sick, and she couldn’t stand long enough to cook, and then she couldn’t come downstairs, and then she died. So we don’t do breakfast.”
Luía said nothing for several seconds.
Then she picked up the plate of pancakes and moved it from the center of the table to the counter.
“Okay.”
The twins stared at her.
Mariana looked confused. “Okay?”
“Okay. I didn’t know breakfast belonged to your mother.”
“It does.”
Luía nodded. “Then I won’t take it.”
She began wrapping the pancakes one by one.
Sofía’s lower lip trembled. “But I was eating mine.”
Mariana looked at her sister.
Bianca pushed her plate away angrily. “You ruin everything.”
“I’m protecting Mom.”
“From pancakes?”
The question came from Laura.
Everyone turned.
Laura rarely challenged Mariana.
She pulled her hood tighter. “Mom is dead. Pancakes can’t hurt her.”
The silence was enormous.
Mariana’s face collapsed.
She ran out of the room.
Ricardo had heard the last sentence from the hallway.
He wanted to follow Mariana, but he also saw Laura’s expression after saying the word dead aloud.
The girl looked as though she had thrown a brick through a church window.
Ricardo stepped into the kitchen.
“Laura.”
She backed away.
Luía shook her head very slightly.
He stopped.
Laura whispered, “I shouldn’t have said it.”
Ricardo swallowed. “It’s true.”
“No one says it.”
He looked around the table.
She was right.
For a year, the family had used softer words.
Gone.
Passed away.
Lost.
Not here anymore.
They had built a mansion full of language designed to avoid the one fact none of them could escape.
“Your mother died,” Ricardo said, and his voice broke on the final word.
Julia began to cry.
Sofía slid from her chair and wrapped both arms around her father’s waist.
The twins stared down at their plates.
Laura’s hand moved toward her hair.
Luía saw it.
Instead of saying stop, she placed a rubber band on the table beside her.
Laura picked it up and stretched it between her fingers.
Ricardo noticed.
That tiny movement hurt almost as much as saying Claris was dead.
“Can we still eat?” Julia asked.
Ricardo looked toward the wrapped pancakes.
“I think Mom would be furious if we wasted food.”
A tiny laugh escaped Sofía.
Ricardo laughed too, then covered his face because the sound turned into a sob.
His daughters moved toward him.
All except Mariana.
She stood unseen in the hallway, watching.
Luía saw her but did not expose her.
Ricardo sat at the table.
Beatriz poured too much syrup on his pancake.
Bianca added even more.
Julia stole a banana slice from his plate.
For twelve minutes, six chairs were occupied, though one was filled only after Mariana quietly returned and sat at the far end.
No one played Motown.
No one pretended it was Sunday.
Nobody called it a tradition.
It was just breakfast.
That made it possible.
Augusto arrived at eight-thirty and nearly dropped his phone when he walked past the kitchen.
He had worked for Ricardo for eleven years.
He had seen acquisitions, lawsuits, a failed New York expansion, and one board meeting where three investors threatened to resign.
Nothing surprised him like six girls sitting at one table.
Later, in the study, Augusto closed the door.
“You need to keep her.”
Ricardo looked up from his laptop. “She is a maid.”
“She got all six girls to eat breakfast.”
“They ate pancakes.”
“Sir, last month Mariana threw a toaster into the swimming pool because a nanny asked her to sit down.”
Ricardo rubbed his face.
He knew Augusto was right, and he hated how desperately he wanted the miracle to continue.
“What do I offer her?”
“More money.”
“That fixes everything, doesn’t it?”
Augusto heard the bitterness. “No. But it might keep her from taking three buses.”
Ricardo went quiet.
That afternoon, he called Luía into the study.
“I want to change your position.”
She immediately shook her head. “No.”
“You don’t even know the offer.”
“I know what you’re trying to do.”
“What am I trying to do?”
“Turn one good breakfast into a job description.”
His eyebrows rose.
“You have experience with the girls.”
“Four days.”
“They respond to you.”
“Sometimes.”
“I can triple your salary.”
Luía looked almost offended.
“Mr. Mendonza, thirty-seven women came here because someone believed enough money could make them stay through anything.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. It isn’t.”
He leaned back. “What do you want?”
The question surprised her.
Luía thought about the bus rides before dawn, tuition bills, her father’s medication, and the cracked phone screen she had been ignoring for months.
Then she thought about Mariana standing in the hallway while her family ate.
“I want my job to stay honest,” she said.
“Meaning?”
“I clean. I help when I can. I’m not their nanny, therapist, mother, or replacement for your wife.”
Ricardo flinched at the last phrase.
“And if they come to you?”
“I’ll listen.”
“And if there’s an emergency?”
“I’ll help.”
“And if I ask your opinion?”
“I’ll give it, and you’ll probably hate it.”
Despite himself, he smiled.
Luía did not.
She stood to leave.
“Luía.”
She turned.
“Why are you doing this?”
Her expression changed slightly.
“Because someone should teach them that adults can stay without owning them.”
After she left, Ricardo stared at the closed door.
That night, Mariana entered his study carrying a plate.
One cold pancake sat in the middle.
“For you?” Ricardo asked.
“For Mom.”
His chest tightened.
Mariana put it on the desk. “Can we put it by her picture for tonight?”
“Yes.”
“And tomorrow we throw it away.”
“Yes.”
She nodded.
At the doorway, she stopped.
“Dad?”
“What?”
“Don’t hire Luía as a nanny.”
He studied her face. “Why?”
Mariana looked down.
May you like
“Because then she’ll leave.”
It was the first time she admitted she wanted Luía to stay.
