A photo of him with Lupita at age eight.
He is missing a tooth. She is kissing his forehead. On the back, in her handwriting, it says:
Our boy has a stubborn heart. May life teach him gently.
You sit on the bed and cry.
Life did not teach him gently.
Maybe you were wrong to try to make it do so.
Three months later, the house is yours again in a way it has not been since Lupita died.
You paint the dining room.
You donate half the furniture Karla treated like hers.
You turn Luis’s old bedroom into a small office with Lupita’s sewing machine in the corner and your accounting books on the shelves. You take a cooking class because feeding people no longer has to mean being consumed.
Silvia comes over on Sundays.
She brings gossip.
You make coffee.
Sometimes you laugh until your chest hurts.
