Fear belonged to men who had lost control.
I wasn’t one of them.
Not yet.
I climbed into a taxi and gave the driver the address of the house.
Not home.
I noticed the difference immediately.
For twenty-one years, it had been home because Irma was inside it.
Now, before I had even arrived, it had already become the house.
The driver glanced at me in the mirror, probably because I was still wearing the same expensive shirt from the trip, wrinkled now, smelling faintly of airplane air and expensive perfume.
I turned my face toward the window so he wouldn’t see the slap mark.
When we turned onto my street, I sat up straight.
Two cars waited outside the gate.
One belonged to Mauricio.
The other belonged to a locksmith.
I stepped out before the taxi fully stopped.
“What the hell is this?” I shouted.
The locksmith looked startled.
Mauricio didn’t.
He stood beside the gate with a folder tucked under one arm, jaw hard as stone. Beside him stood Doña Teresa, our neighbor—the woman who had called Mauricio when Irma collapsed. She held a plastic bag of flowers in one hand, and when she saw me, her mouth tightened with disgust.
I ignored her.
“This is my house,” I snapped.
Mauricio pulled a paper from the folder and handed it to me.
“Temporary occupancy order. You signed it.”
“I signed under pressure.”
“You signed after your wife almost died while you were with another woman.”
I crushed the paper in my fist.
The locksmith kept working.
The metallic clicking inside the lock sounded obscene.
I stepped toward him.
“Stop.”
Mauricio moved in front of me.
“Don’t.”
I laughed, but my voice shook.
“You think you can throw me out of my own house?”
“No,” he said calmly. “Irma can.”
Her name again.
Irma.
Suddenly I remembered her barefoot in the kitchen at two in the morning years ago, stirring beans because I had invited a client to lunch and forgotten we couldn’t afford a restaurant.
I remembered her sewing a button onto my only decent shirt while promising me one day I’d own an office with glass walls.
I remembered her hands.
Then I remembered those same hands gripping hospital sheets while she told me not to touch her.
The locksmith finished.
The gate opened.
I pushed past Mauricio and entered the house.
Everything looked exactly the same.
That somehow made it worse.
Same entry table.
Same family photographs.
Same painting Irma bought from a street artist in Guadalajara because she said beauty didn’t need permission from rich people.
Same smell of polished wood, lavender cleaner, and coffee brewed too strong.
But my things were gone.
