Then you turn and walk out.
The gate shuts behind you with a metallic bang that sounds like a judge’s gavel.
The alley beyond the house is cobbled and narrow, lined with pastel walls and old houses that hold heat the way grudges hold memory. Purple jacaranda blossoms scatter across the stones. A dog sleeps in a patch of shade under a tree as if the world has never broken anything important. Somewhere at the corner, mariachi music drifts from a restaurant patio, cheerful and completely indifferent to the fact that your life has just been split in two.
You tell yourself not to look back.
Not at the gate. Not at the balcony where Lucía used to stand with her coffee and watch you hang laundry like she was supervising hired help. Not at the kitchen window where doña Carmen once looked at you and said, with a smile thin as thread, that some women were born for marriage and others were only tolerated in it.
