“Anyway,” he asked. “Change of subject. How are your grades?”
She was saved from having to answer this by the appearance of Santiago, who emerged from the kitchen’s swinging doors bearing their plates of eggs aloft like the scale of justice. He was slimmer than Zoe had ever seen him and looked several years younger.
“Look at this!” cried Frank. “It’s the incredible shrinking man.”
He slapped Santiago’s still substantial girth appreciatively. Santiago bowed his head, glowing with barely concealed pride.
“I heard the most beautiful girl in New York was in my restaurant,” he said, “and I had to come see for myself.”
He slid the food onto the table and bent to kiss her.
“Frank’s right,” said Zoe. “You look great.”
Santiago turned to Frank and put a large hand on his shoulder. “What about this guy! The hair is muy guapo.”
“Uh-uh, don’t change the subject,” said Frank. “What’s going on with you, man? You look good. You even smell good. What’s new?”
“Nothing new! I’ve just been eating well, you know, taking my exercise, and …”
“You met someone, didn’t you,” said Zoe.
Santiago beamed. “I have a new friend, yes.”
“You’ve been holding out on me!” cried Frank. “Who is she? When can I meet her?”
“Her name is Dominique,” he said. “We have been on three dates.”
“And?” asked Zoe.
“She is warm like the sun.”
“Wow, man,” said Frank. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It is new,” he said. “And with you and Cleo, I didn’t want to …”
“Hey,” said Frank. “Stop that. Just because we broke up, doesn’t mean I can’t be happy for my friend when he finds love.”
Santiago pulled up a metal chair and straddled it. “I appreciate that, brother,” he said. “Now Zoe, you tell me, has he cried to you yet? He needs to cry. When a marriage ends, a man should shed tears like heartbeats.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Frank.
“He doesn’t want to talk about it,” said Zoe.
“But you must talk about it,” said Santiago. “It’s the only way to heal.”
Zoe had, in fact, never seen Frank cry. He often joked that their mother was so disgusted by tears, she had purged him of the habit by the tender age of five.
“Will you stay married?” asked Santiago. “For her visa?”
“If she wants to,” said Frank. “Honestly, I don’t know. Last I heard she was staying with Quentin. Who I’m sure is doing a good job of turning her against me.”
“Last you heard?” exclaimed Santiago. “Why don’t you call her, man? I remember the food I made for your wedding like it was yesterday. It was yesterday. She still loves you, I feel it. A girl like Cleo loves forever.”
“I’m not sure that’s true of anyone,” said Frank.
“Pssh.” Santiago made to cover Zoe’s ears from this unromantic opinion. “I’ve been trying to call her,” he continued. “The hospital would not let me give her my rice pudding. I wanted to make it for her again.”
“Hospital?” asked Zoe.
Frank gave Santiago a furious look. Zoe noticed him immediately color.
“Not hospital!” he exclaimed. “Sorry, my English gets confused. I meant … hospitality team! My team would not let me give her my secret rice pudding recipe. They can be very strict.”
“That’s weird,” said Zoe. “It’s your recipe.”
Zoe looked at Frank, who was shrinking in his chair, holding his chest again. She could feel in her gut that Santiago was lying. Her first instinct was to badger Frank relentlessly until he had no choice but to tell her—she was a theater kid, after all, and treated secrets as a vital source of sustenance—but she stopped herself. Suddenly she could see exactly what Frank had looked like as a child. That hopeful, fearful expression as he peered at the world from behind his glasses. She wanted to reach over the table and cup his skull in her hands. She wanted him to know that she would always choose him, always take his side, and that even if he never told her what happened to Cleo, she would understand. Because he was her brother and she was his sister. It was that simple and that complicated.
“Santiago, these eggs look amazing,” she said instead.