Chapter 13 - THE HOUSE BECAME MINE
The day my parents left the house, I did not go there.
I didn’t want to watch.
I didn’t want photographs.
I didn’t want victory.
Andrés collected the keys.
Two days later, Mateo and I returned.
I stood outside the gate holding Alba.
The house looked smaller than I remembered.
Maybe childhood makes prisons look like castles.
Mateo unlocked the door.
The hallway smelled the same.
Furniture polish.
Coffee.
My mother’s perfume.
I stepped inside.
Every memory came back at once.
Noelia opening my birthday presents.
Dad telling me not to complain.
Mom measuring our grades against each other.
Me learning to apologize before anyone even accused me of something.
Then I walked upstairs.
My old bedroom was empty.
Noelia had taken almost everything.
But the white bassinet was still there.
The one Alba had been sleeping in when my mother entered.
I touched its edge.
My hands started shaking.
Mateo came behind me.
“We can sell the house.”
I looked at him.
“You don’t have to prove anything by keeping it.”
He understood me too well.
“I don’t know what I want.”
“Then we wait.”
We did.
For three weeks.
Then one morning, I woke up knowing.
“I want to change it.”
Mateo smiled.
“How?”
“Everything.”
We painted the walls.
Replaced the old flooring.
Removed the enormous dining table where every holiday had somehow turned into a comparison between Noelia and me.
We turned my father’s office into a playroom.
We replaced my mother’s rose bushes with lavender.
And my old bedroom became Alba’s nursery.
Not because I wanted my daughter living inside my childhood.
Because I wanted to prove that a room could remember something new.
On one wall, I framed Grandma’s letter.
Underneath it, Mateo hung a small wooden sign.
BUILD YOUR OWN TABLE.
The first night we slept there, I woke at 3:11 a.m.
For a moment, I forgot where I was.
Then Alba cried.
I walked into her room.
Moonlight came through the curtains.
I lifted her.
She settled against my chest.
And suddenly I realized something.
I wasn’t afraid.
No footsteps in the hallway could hurt me.
No one could open the door and tell me I didn’t belong.
No one could give my room away.
No one could throw me outside.
The house was mine.
But more importantly, my life was mine.
Then the doorbell rang.
At three in the morning.
Mateo came downstairs behind me.
We checked the camera.
My father was standing outside.
May you like
Alone.
Holding a small wooden box.
