“It was ’97,” she begins. “We were both working at Trattoria della Luna, the one that burned two years later. My sister—your aunt Lucia—was the star. She made the sauces, picked the herbs, charmed the customers. That tomato paste? That was hers. Not the restaurant’s. Hers. Family recipe, passed down from Nonna Alina, all the way from Calabria.”
She pauses to catch her breath, or perhaps gather courage.
“One night, Chef Marco in the pantry copying her recipe book. Word-for-word. She threatened to tell the owner. But Marco… he had friends. Real friends. The kind who handled problems with matches and gasoline.”
My stomach churns. “You think they threatened her?”
Aunt Teresa nods. “I know they did. That same night, she packed a bag and told me she was going to Milan. Said she’d be back in a week. I never saw her again. Two months later, a letter came from Argentina. No return address. ‘Don’t look for me. They’re watching.
She shrugs. “Insurance scam, most likely. But you said the paste smells the same. That means someone has her recipe.”
“Or she’s back,” I say quietly.
That idea floats in the air like ash. Nobody moves.
The officer finally says, “I’ll file this as a neighbor dispute for now. But if you hear from her—your sister—I need to know.”
He leaves with a polite nod, but the weight of his questions lingers.
That night, I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about the fire, the sauce, the strange quiet way my aunt had told that story. And something else.
A letter I found years ago in a box of Christmas ornaments. It was from Lucia, addressed to someone named Mateo. It was in Spanish, but I remember a phrase in English scrawled at the bottom: “Tell Teresa the sauce is safe.”
Back then, I thought it was some inside joke. Now, I’m not so sure.
The next morning, Aunt Teresa is back at the pot, like nothing ever happened. But there’s a tension in her jaw that wasn’t there before.
