PART 2
My marriage ended after five years. No children. No assets to my name. Not even a word asking me to stay.
The house I had once tried to call “home” stood silently on a street in Guadalajara, where I had moved from Puebla to build a life with my husband.
When I walked through the iron gate that day, the sun beat down on the red brick patio.
But inside… there was only cold.
My mother-in-law, Doña Carmen Rivera, stood with her arms crossed, looking at me with satisfaction, as if she had finally freed herself from someone she had never accepted.
Beside her, Lucía, my sister-in-law, smiled with that expression she always had when she knew I was suffering. “Go away,” she murmured. “You’ve stayed too long.”
Mateo, my ex-husband, didn’t come out to say goodbye. He didn’t even say goodbye. Maybe he was still inside the house. Or maybe he’d left earlier to avoid this moment.
But it didn’t matter anymore.
I didn’t demand anything. I didn’t argue. I didn’t ask for explanations. I didn’t cry. I only had the clothes I was wearing and a small bag.
I bowed my head slightly. “I’m leaving.”
No one answered.
I turned toward the gate.
Just as I touched it, a voice called my name.
“Valeria.”
It was my father-in-law. Don Ernesto Rivera.
For five years, he’d barely spoken to me. Always silent. Always distant. Sitting alone in the yard with the newspaper or tending his cacti, as if all the tension at home didn’t concern him in the slightest.
I turned around. He was standing by the trash can, holding a black bag.
“If you’re leaving,” he said slowly, “throw this away for me too, while you’re at it.”
He lifted the bag slightly. “It’s trash.”
I was a little surprised, but nodded. “Of course.”
Continued on the next page
