The restaurant was closed. Sundays. The one day the mask came off and I didn't have to be Mila. Eduardo stayed to prep for Monday. The kitchen staff was gone. The dining room was dark. I sat at the corner table with a glass of wine and the quiet and the memories that came when the quiet was deep enough.
I was born in Cartagena, not Havana. That was the lie I told the quiet man in the kitchen in Doral. My mother was from Centro Habana. That part was true. She came to Colombia at nineteen, pregnant, alone, speaking Spanish with a Cuban accent that never left her, even after thirty years. My father was Colombian. He was gone before I was born. Not dead. Gone. The kind of gone that meant he'd seen me coming and decided the price of staying was too high.
