Chapter 3: The Last Normal Dinner
The garlic bread hit the table with a soft thud, releasing a cloud of herb-scented steam. Mia, beaming, swept a hand over the spread like a game show hostess. “Alright, vampires be damned. Dig in.”
Mina, wedged between her mother and Mia on the long bench seat, immediately lunged for a piece. Her small fingers fumbled the buttery slice, and her fork clattered onto her plate with a sharp, ringing sound.
Catalina jumped as if startled by a gunshot. Her knee jerked beneath the table, connecting solidly with Dominic’s.
The contact was brief, incidental. It felt like a live wire.
Dominic froze, a forkful of pasta halfway to his mouth. His eyes snapped to hers across the table. For a heartbeat, the room narrowed to that single point of connection—the press of her denim-clad knee against his. The hum of the refrigerator, the tinny sound of the radio from the kitchen, Mia’s chatter—it all melted into a distant buzz.
Catalina’s eyes were wide, dark pools of panic and something else. Something hot and terrified. She looked away first, her attention snapping to Mina with a force that seemed to hurt her neck. “Careful, mija.”
“Sorry, Mama.” Mina mumbled, already chewing.
“It’s just a fork,” Mia laughed, sliding into her own chair next to Dom. “Relax. You’d think we were defusing a bomb.” She tore into a piece of garlic bread, oblivious to the currents twisting the air between her siblings. “So, Dom. Rey says you’re tuning the Supra for the Friday night run down by the docks. He’s scared you’ve found another ten horses in that engine.”
Dom forced himself to chew, to swallow. The food was tasteless. “It’s about balance. Not just horses.”
“Spoken like a true poet,” Mia teased, nudging him with her elbow. “You should hear him, Cat. He talks about fuel mixtures like they’re sonnets.”
Catalina offered a thin smile, chasing a piece of penne around her plate. “I’ve heard it. Many times.”
Her voice was too quiet. Dom heard the strain underneath.
Dom heard the strain underneath. He felt his own composure, a fragile thing he’d built over years, beginning to fracture under the ordinary weight of this dinner. Mina swung her legs under the table, her small heels thumping a rhythm against the bench.
“Tío Dom, can I see the race car tomorrow?” she asked, pasta sauce smeared like war paint on her chin. “The real one?”
“It’s just a car, kiddo,” he said, forcing his voice into an easy rumble. “Same as any other.”
“No it’s not! It’s special.” Her certainty was absolute. “Mama said it has a monster heart.”
Catalina’s fork scraped loudly on her plate. Mia paused, her own fork hovering. “Monster heart? That’s a new one.”
“It was in my dream,” Mina explained, shrugging. “A good monster. In the engine. It goes vroom-vroom-VROOM.” She demonstrated with her whole body, rocking the table.
The innocent explanation did nothing to settle the cold dread in Dom’s gut. The dream wasn’t just a dream to her. It was intuition, a truth she sensed but couldn’t name. Catalina was staring at her plate, her jaw rigid.
“Well, this monster needs a tune-up,” Mia said, breaking the sudden quiet. She reached over and wiped Mina’s chin with a napkin. “And you need a bath. You’re wearing more sauce than you ate.”
Dinner stumbled forward. Dominic answered Mia’s questions about the race in clipped, mechanic’s terms. Catalina contributed only when spoken to directly, her replies short and bright with false energy. The space beneath the table felt charged, a secret landscape where his leg remembered the exact pressure and point of contact with hers.
He was drowning in the normalcy.
“So, is Letty riding with you Friday?” Mia asked, collecting plates.
“She’s my spotter. Always is.”
“Good. She keeps your head straight.” Mia stacked the dishes with a clatter. “Maybe you should take Catalina one of these nights. For old times’ sake. Before Mom comes back on Sunday and the whole neighborhood gets dull again.”
The suggestion landed like a spark in dry tinder. Dom felt Catalina’s gaze lock onto him, a physical weight.
“I’ve got Mina,” Catalina said quickly, her voice a tight wire. “Can’t really leave her for midnight street races.”
“Bring her! She can sleep in the back.” Mia waved a hand, carrying the stack to the sink. “It’s family. She should see her uncle in his natural habitat, terrifying rich kids in their dad’s sports cars.”
“Maybe.” Catalina stood abruptly, her chair scraping back. “Let me help you with these.”
They moved around the kitchen, a silent, efficient ballet of rinsing and stacking. Dominic stayed at the table with Mina, who was now drawing race cars on a napkin with a blue crayon. He watched Catalina’s back, the tension in her shoulders visible through the thin cotton of her shirt.
He heard the low murmur of their voices by the sink, just under the rush of the faucet.
“…you okay?” Mia asked, her tone shifting from playful to genuine concern.
“Just tired.” Catalina’s answer was muffled.
“You seem… I don’t know. Wound tight. Is it the thing with the washing machine? Did he not fix it right?”
“He fixed it fine.”
“Then what?”
A beat of silence, filled only by the splash of water. Dominic held his breath. He saw Catalina’s head bow slightly. He could imagine her closing her eyes, wrestling with the lie.
“It’s nothing, Mia. Really.” Catalina’s voice was softer now, weary. “Just a long week. Mom being gone, handling everything here…”
“You know you can talk to me, right? About anything.”
“I know.”
The finality in that quiet I know ended the conversation. Mia shut off the water. The quiet that followed was heavy, complete. Dominic looked down at Mina’s drawing. She’d drawn two stick figures in a car, one large, one small. Above it, she’d scribbled the sun, and below it, a messy, blue snarling face near the wheels.
“That the monster?” he asked, his throat tight.
“Yep. He helps you go fast.” She looked up at him, her brown eyes—his eyes—utterly serious. “He’s not scary if you’re the driver.”
The simplicity of her logic was a knife to his heart. If you’re the driver. He was no longer sure who was driving any of this. The promise he’d made in the laundry room felt like gravity, pulling him toward a crash he couldn’t steer away from.
He became aware of a new silence. The kitchen was empty. The light was off. Mia and Catalina had moved into the living room, their low voices a distant murmur. He was alone at the table with his daughter.
“Come on, champion,” he said, forcing a smile. “Bath time. Then I’ll read you that story.”
He lifted her, settling her on his hip, her small arms looping trustingly around his neck. Her head rested on his shoulder, smelling of child’s sweat and tomato sauce. He carried her down the hall, past the living room archway.
He didn’t look in. He didn’t need to. He could feel Catalina’s awareness like a magnetic pull, tracking his movement past the doorway, following him toward the bathroom. The house felt different now. The familiar walls seemed to hold their breath, witnesses to a line that was about to be erased.
He ran the bath, testing the temperature with his elbow. He helped Mina out of her sauce-stained clothes. His large, grease-stained hands were clumsy with the small buttons, a contrast that never failed to humble him. As she splashed in the water, his mind raced ahead, past the story, past bedtime.To after.
To the conversation that could no longer be avoided. To the terrifying logistics of a decision that had no map. The weight of it was a physical pressure in his chest. He heard Mia’s laugh from the living room, sharp and clear. A normal sound in a house that was about to stop being normal.
He focused on washing Mina’s hair, on her giggle as he poured a cup of clean water over her head. This was real. This was the anchor. Everything else was chaos threatening to pull them under.
Later, with Mina tucked into bed, a story read, her breathing settling into the deep rhythm of sleep, Dominic stood in her doorway. The nightlight cast a soft glow over her stuffed animals. He didn’t know how long he stood there, memorizing the line of her cheek against the pillow.
The floorboard in the hall creaked. He turned.
Catalina was there, leaning against the wall just outside the pool of light. She had changed into soft grey sweats and an old t-shirt, her hair damp at the ends from washing her face. She looked young, and impossibly tired.
“She’s out,” he whispered.
Catalina nodded, not looking at the bed, but at him. “Mia’s gone to bed. She has an early class.”
They were stating facts. They were building a cage of quiet words around the thing they needed to say. The house was settling, every tick of the cooling pipes, every sigh of the floorboards, amplified in the new, profound silence.
“So,” she said, the word barely a breath.
“So.” He stepped out of Mina’s room, pulling the door nearly closed behind him. The hallway was dark and narrow. They were inches apart. He could see the pulse fluttering at the base of her throat.
“The living room,” she said, turning and walking down the hall without checking to see if he followed. She didn’t need to.
He followed. The room was lit by a single lamp, its shade tilted to throw most of the light onto the worn carpet. The furniture held the ghosts of their childhood. She didn’t sit. She stood in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around herself, facing him.
The quiet stretched, elastic and painful.
“You said you choose us,” she began, her voice low and raw. “How does that look at seven in the morning, Dom? How does that look when Mia asks why we’re having coffee together every day? When Mom calls and asks what’s new?”
He had no blueprint. “We figure it out. We… take steps.”
“What’s the first step?” she pressed, taking one toward him. Her eyes were desperate, needing a concrete answer. “Do you move out of your apartment? Do we tell people you’re renting the back house from me? Do we just… start sitting closer at family dinners and hope no one notices?”
Each question was a possible scenario, each one riddled with holes. “It doesn’t have to be a lie. It can just be… more.”
“More of this?” Her gesture encompassed the dark room, the charged space between them. “More secret conversations and jumping when our knees touch? I can’t. I told you. I’m done with that.”
He closed the distance between them then. He didn’t touch her. He just stood before her, making her look up at him. “Then we tell them.”
She barked a short, harsh laugh that held no humor. “Right. We just… tell them. ‘Hey, family, surprise.’” She rubbed her hands over her face. “And then what? You think they’ll just get used to it? You think Mia will ever look at me the same way again? You think Mom’s heart can take it?”
“I don’t know!” he said, his own frustration boiling over, his voice still a harsh whisper. “But I know what happens if we don’t. We die a little every day in front of our daughter. We become these… polite strangers who share a ghost. I won’t do that anymore.”
Her breath hitched. In the lamplight, he saw tears shining in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. She was furious. “It’s easy for you to say that. You’re not the one who will be called… the names. I am. I’m the mother. I’m the one who let this happen. They’ll forgive you. They’ll blame me.”
She was probably right. The unfairness of it was a rock in his stomach. The world would judge her more harshly. The thought ignited a different, protective anger in him.
The thought ignited a different, protective anger in him. “Then I’ll take the blame. All of it. I’ll say I forced you. I’ll say it was my fault.”
“Don’t be an idiot.” She shoved his chest, a weak push that left her hand flat against him. “That’s a worse lie. And it still destroys everything.” Her hand didn’t move. The heat of her palm seeped through his shirt. “We’re in a box, Dom. There’s no clean way out.”
He covered her hand with his own, pinning it to his chest where she could feel his heart hammering. “Then we break the box.”
A sound sliced through the thick silence—a soft, frightened whimper from the hallway. Then a muffled cry.
They sprang apart as if scalded.
Catalina was moving before the second cry finished, her socked feet silent on the floorboards. Dom was half a step behind her, his blood running cold. They found Mina just outside her doorway, a small silhouette trembling in the dark. Her face was slick with tears, her breath coming in hiccupping sobs.
“Mija, what’s wrong?” Catalina crouched, her voice instantly soft, wrapping her arms around the girl. “Was it another dream?”
Mina nodded violently, burying her face in Catalina’s neck. “The monster was loud,” she whimpered, her words muffled. “It was growling and it was… sad.”
Dom stood over them, a statue of helpless guilt. The engine’s growl. Their raised, hissed voices in the living room. They had been the monster. Their sadness had woken her.
Catalina rocked her gently. “It was just a dream, sweetie. It’s gone now.”
Mina pulled back, her big, wet eyes searching her mother’s face in the dim hall light. She then looked past her, at Dom standing rigid in the shadows. Her gaze held a desperate, simple hope that cut through every complex layer of their adult dilemma.
“Mama?” Mina’s voice was small, scratched raw from crying.
“What is it, sweetie?”
The little girl took a shuddering breath, her small hands clutching Catalina’s shirt. She looked directly at Dom, her question a quiet, devastating missile in the dark hall. “Can Tío Dom be my father?”
The air vanished from Dom’s lungs. Time didn’t slow; it simply stopped, crystallizing around those six words. He saw the same seismic shock fracture Catalina’s features, her eyes widening in pure, unguarded terror. The hall light buzzed, a distant, irrelevant sound.
Mina waited, her expression so open and hopeful it was a physical pain.
Catalina’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked up at Dom, a silent scream for a script they had never written. This was the precipice. A lie here would cement their separation forever. The truth would break their world wide open.
Dom knelt. The floorboards creaked under his weight. He was now level with them, his face close to Mina’s. He could smell the clean scent of her baby shampoo, see the tear-tracks gleaming. He didn’t look at Catalina. He looked only at his daughter.
His voice, when it came, was rough but clear, leaving no room for misunderstanding. “Yeah, Mina,” he said, the words feeling like vows in his mouth. “I can be.”
A profound, terrifying silence followed. Mina’s crying ceased, replaced by a look of deep, soul-satisfied relief. She simply nodded, as if he’d confirmed something she’d always known. Catalina made a small, choked sound, her hand flying to her own mouth.
Dom finally looked at her. Her eyes were wells of pure panic, but beneath it, he saw a flicker of something else—a terrifying, shared resolve. The box was broken. There was no putting it back together.
The first step had been taken.
The first step had been taken.
Mina’s small body went slack against Catalina, a shuddering sigh of relief escaping her. “Okay,” she whispered into her mother’s shoulder, as if sealing a pact. Then her eyes fluttered closed, the exhaustion from crying and the weight of her own question pulling her under almost instantly.
Catalina remained frozen, her arms locked around their sleeping daughter. She stared at Dom over the top of Mina’s head, her expression blank with shock. The panic had been replaced by a hollowed-out quiet. Dom stayed kneeling, his own declaration hanging in the air between them, solid and irrevocable.
The hallway clock ticked, each second a hammer blow.
Carefully, as if handling a bomb, Catalina stood with Mina cradled against her. She didn’t look at Dom again. She turned and carried Mina back into the bedroom, the door sighing shut behind her with a soft, final click.
Dom stayed on the floor. The worn wood grain blurred under his gaze. His knees ached, but the pain was distant, irrelevant. He had said it. The words were out, loose in the world now, and they could not be called back. A strange, cold calm settled over him, the kind that follows a disaster when the screaming stops and the scale of the wreckage becomes clear.
He heard the faint rustle of Catalina settling Mina back into bed, the whisper of a blanket being adjusted. He pushed himself to his feet, his joints protesting. He walked to the living room and stood in the same spot they had argued minutes before. The lamp still cast its skewed, lonely circle of light.
When Catalina emerged from the hallway, she looked emptied. She walked past him to the kitchen, filled a glass with water from the tap, and drank it all without stopping. She set the glass down on the counter with a precise click.
“She’s asleep again,” she said, her back to him. Her voice was flat, stripped of all emotion.
“Cat.”
“Don’t.” She turned around, leaning against the sink. Her eyes were focused somewhere past his left shoulder. “Just don’t say anything else right now.”
“We have to talk about this.”
“Do we?” A brittle laugh escaped her. “You just decided. You just… answered for both of us. For all of us. What is there to talk about?”
He moved into the kitchen doorway, blocking the light from the living room. “She asked me a question. I gave her an honest answer.”
“An honest answer.” Catalina repeated the words like they were in a foreign language. “And what’s the honest plan for tomorrow morning, Dom? When she wakes up and calls you ‘Dad’ in front of Mia? What’s the script then?”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“We’ll figure it out?” Her whisper was fierce, cutting. “That’s your whole plan? You drop a grenade in the middle of our lives and your plan is to ‘figure it out’?” She pushed off the sink and took a step toward him. “That’s not a plan. That’s a surrender. And I’m not ready to surrender.”
“You said you were done with the in-between.”
“I am!” She bit her lip, glancing down the hall toward Mina’s room. She lowered her voice to a furious hiss. “But I wanted a say in what came next. You took that. You just… committed us.”
He saw it then, the core of her anger. It wasn’t about the truth. It was about control. About having it ripped away in a moment of profound vulnerability. He had responded as a father. She needed to respond as a mother, a sister, a daughter. The calculus was different, heavier.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it. “I saw her face. I just… reacted.”
Some of the rigid tension left her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around herself again, a protective gesture that was becoming familiar. “I know. I saw it too.” She finally met his eyes. “What she asked… it’s all she’s ever wanted. You know that, right? Even without knowing, she wanted it.”
“I know.”
Silence pooled in the kitchen, thinner now, less charged. The immediate shock was receding, leaving the jagged reality of their situation exposed. Dom looked at the fridge, covered in Mina’s drawings held up by racing-themed magnets. A family portrait from last Christmas. A shopping list in Mia’s looping handwriting. A world they were about to shatter.
“We have to tell Letty,” Catalina said quietly. “Tomorrow. She needs to hear it from us before… before anything happens.”
Dom nodded. Letty was the only fixed point, the only one who knew the map of this forbidden terrain. “Okay.”
“And we need rules.” Catalina’s tone was that of a general planning a siege. “No being alone together for a while. Not until we know what we’re doing.”
“Cat—”
“Rules, Dom.” Her voice cracked. “Or I will break. I am holding on by a thread. You made a promise to her. I have to live inside that promise. I need walls. I need lines I cannot cross.”
He understood. He hated it, but he understood. The promise was a door thrown open. Her rules were the only way to keep from tumbling through it headfirst.