Lucy stood in front of me, pale, her fingers clutching her purse strap as if the world depended on it not falling. “What did you say?” I asked. On the other end of the line, there was a silence heavy with the passage of years. “Don’t sign anything tomorrow, Patricia. Not until you know the whole truth.”

I laughed, but not because it was funny. I laughed the way a woman does when she’s already cried too much. “The truth? You want to talk to me about truths now, Raul? Three months without answering my messages. Three months without seeing your daughters except for the occasional video call when you remembered to make one.” “That’s not how it was.” “Then how was it?”

Lucy looked down. And that’s when I understood the worst part: she did know. “Patty…” she whispered. I raised my hand to stop her. “Raul, if you have something to say, say it now.”

I heard a noise in the background. Like traffic. Like the city swallowing someone whole on a wet avenue. “I’m downstairs.”

I froze. I looked out the window of my cousin’s apartment—a third-floor walk-up, with clotheslines hanging between buildings and the scent of noodle soup drifting out from a neighbor’s kitchen. On the sidewalk, next to a street food cart still steaming under a yellow streetlamp, was Raul. Thin. With a several-day-old beard. Holding the phone to his ear. He didn’t look like the confident man who once told me we couldn’t carry other people’s problems. He looked like a man who had lost his home from the inside out. “Come up,” I said. I hung up.

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