Page 121 of Every Step She Takes
That’s when I start to cry. Choking, gasping sobs that cause other funeral goers to stare. Big, ugly tears that make my face hot and sticky as I stand here in front of my smoking-hot stepmom.
“Don’t look at me,” I grumble at Gloria as I attempt to dry my eyes on the sleeve of my suit.
“I wouldn’t dare,” she says, staring directly at my tearstained face.
“These tears aren’t for him,” I tell her.
“I didn’t think they were,” she says. “I assumed they were for you.”
Gloria doesn’t attempt to comfort me. She doesn’t hand me a handkerchief or try to escort me away so no one else will witness my loud, snot-filled breakdown. No, all Gloria does is stand there with me through the snot and the stares, until Inez shows up at my side again and wraps me in her arms.
“Do you think…?” Gloria says before I can walk away with Inez. “Could I maybe call you sometime, Mal?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to get to know you, Daughter Dearest.”
I laugh through my hysterical tears, and Gloria smiles at me in return. “We’re family, whether we want to be or not.”
“I—I’m not sure I want to have a relationship with you,” I tell her, because it’s the truth. There’s no malice in my voice now. No anger or resentment. Gloria isn’t Valentim. And maybe even Valentim wasn’t Valentim. Or, not the Valentim I thought he was.
“Nothing has to be decided today,” Gloria says with a small shrug. Her manicured hand dips into her Prada clutch, and she pulls out a business card with a sharp flick of her wrist. “My personalcell is on the back. I’ll be here whenever you’re ready. And so will the company.”
I stare down at the gold-foil-embossed business card in my hands as she walks away.
Gloriana Silva. Damn. My father did always have expensive taste.
THIRTYSEATTLE, WASHINGTONSaturday, August 23, 2025
Sadie
I must admit: I’ve truly outdone myself.
The seats from an old Windstar van have been converted into a mudroom bench. There’s an antique chess set that makes a gorgeous statement end table. Six dressers with murals painted across the drawers, three refinished dining room tables, nine reupholstered accent chairs, a dilapidated chest saved by wallpaper and epoxy. Two cracked bathtubs that now work perfectly as raised garden beds. An armoire-turned–coffee bar, and a coffee bar–turned–wine hutch and a broken piano that’s now a desk. Four bookshelves built out of vintage doors and one massive kitchen island rebuilt from two old rolltop desks.
I scroll through my new Etsy page. Three months of hard work, each piece beautifully photographed by Vera during her visit a few weeks ago.
Sadie Designs Wells has already sold seven items. Granted, three of them were purchased by my mother, who lives with me, but at least that saved money on shipping. The other sales were from Ari and Vera, and Rebecca, who bought a matching pair of Adirondack chairs I painted like pride flags, like the benches we saw on the way into Santiago.
Given that the Etsy page only went live an hour ago, I’m happy with those sales.
I close my laptop so I won’t be tempted to stare at the screen until the first stranger makes a purchase from my page, and I survey the empty showroom on the other side of the counter. The badly scuffed floors, the dust outlines from pieces that sat unsellable for years. The walls are checkerboarded shades of green, darker in the places where mirrors or artwork hung, and lighter in places where the sun slowly faded the paint my Nan picked out almost thirty years ago.
This morning, the last van came to take the remainder of the furniture from Live Wells Antiques. It took three months to officially close the store. I sold off our expensive pieces to other stores and auction houses at a discount. I held weekend sales that Vi advertised on her Instagram. I kept the damaged items—the scuffed and stained, the wobbly and the well-worn, the things no one wanted—and I gave them new life using the skills my Nan taught me.
I scoured garage sales and Goodwills and the dump. I picked up the garbage people leave on the curb withFREEsigns taped to them, and now I have a stockpile of broken furniture to repurpose.
I have no idea if I’ll be able to support myself selling upcycled furniture online; I don’t even know if I’ll enjoy it long-term. But for the first time in my life, I’m working toward finding my own dream, and I’m learning to live in the uncertainty. I have a sizable amount of money in savings, since before the Camino, I never had time to spend my earnings, and that should float me for a little while. It will at least give me time to figure out if this is the right path for me.
It’s sad to see the empty, echoey space that once held my Nan’s dream, but it’s alsoliberating. This store has held me hostage my entire life, and I am finally free. No twelve-hour days, no working six days a week, no busyness to use as an excuse not to live. I’m no longer beholden to the store hours painted on thefront door. I’m no longer trapped in this dark, dusty room with my ghosts.
Nan was the one who loved preserving history; I’ve always loved reimagining it.
I have plans to convert the store into an apartment that we can rent out for extra income, but the back room—the place where my Nan taught me to paint with the grain, and how to use a random orbital sander, and how to reupholster a chair without compromising the historical value—will serve as my workshop as I try to launch my own business selling upcycled, DIY furniture. I choose to believe Nan would have loved that for me.
I can hear two sets of footsteps on the backroom stairs, and I know what’s coming for me even before Vi bursts in with my mom toddling after her. “How did it go?” Vi demands.
“It went well. The moving van left about an hour ago, and—”
