Chapter 12 - The Second Key
We moved forward.
That sounded clean.
It wasn’t.
Moving forward meant feeding Mateo with one hand while answering questions about handwriting with the other.
It meant remembering dates when I wanted to sleep.
It meant admitting I had given Marco passwords because marriage was supposed to involve trust.
I changed the passwords.
I canceled his authority on accounts where I could do so.
I worked with Elena on the marriage proceedings and a temporary parenting arrangement.
The company followed its own process.
Rosa followed hers.
For the first time, Marco could not solve everything by getting me alone.
The SUV was returned on a Monday.
It arrived at Elena’s office with the infant seat still installed.
A company driver checked the mileage and photographed its condition.
I stood beside it longer than I intended.
There was a smear on the rear window where I had pressed my hand during my last week of pregnancy.
I remembered waiting for Marco outside a grocery store.
He had gone back in for ice cream because I had mentioned wanting some.
Small kindnesses were real.
So was what came after them.
One did not erase the other.
We arranged the return of the house through counsel.
Marco and Teresa agreed to leave by the end of the week.
I would not go back until the locks were changed and the property had been checked.
On Thursday night, the security camera at the front door went offline.
The monitoring service sent an alert.
Elena called Marco.
He said the internet had failed.
The driver went past the house from the public road.
A moving van stood outside.
That part was expected.
The furniture being carried into it was not.
My dining chairs.
My desk.
A cabinet my mother had left me.
Elena contacted Marco immediately and sent the agreed inventory again.
He claimed his mother had misunderstood.
By the time the collection stopped, the cabinet was already inside the van.
I sat on my bed with my phone in my lap.
For two years, Teresa had called that cabinet old-fashioned.
Now she wanted to take it.
“Do you want to go there?” Papa asked.
“No.”
The answer surprised us both.
I did not need to stand in a driveway to prove that my things were mine.
The cabinet was returned the next morning.
Inside its bottom drawer, beneath a stack of table linens, Elena’s assistant found an envelope addressed to Marco.
It contained a duplicate set of my house keys.
May you like
And a handwritten note from Teresa.
Keep these. She’ll calm down after her father gets tired of her.
