Page 54 of Convenient Vows

I rinse the fork. Dry it slowly. Set it in the drawer like I haven’t done this exact motion a hundred times before. Then I rest both palms on the sink’s edge and close my eyes, breathing in deeply.

I shouldn’t care this much. But I do. And it’s getting harder to pretend otherwise.

The sound of my phone ringing shatters my thoughts, and I pick up the device.

“Hello Mum,”

There is a long pause on the other end.

“Mum?” I say cautiously, already frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s Luisa.” She finally says.

I straighten, heart thudding. “Is she okay? What happened?”

There’s another pause.

Then: “She passed early this morning.”

I go still.

“She… what?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.

“She went in her sleep, Mara. Peacefully.” Mama’s voice cracks, and I can hear her trying to pull herself together for me. “They think it was her heart. She’d been doing better, but last night she got worse. It happened quickly and she didn’t suffer.”

I sink into a chair by the kitchen island, the phone trembling against my cheek.

“No,” I whisper. “No, she was getting better. She said the fever was down, and when I visited her last week, she was walking again. She was supposed to be okay.”

“We all thought that,mija.But her body was tired. She didn’t tell you how much pain she was in, but I think… I think she knew.”

I press a hand to my mouth, trying to hold it in, but the sob rises anyway.

“I was going to visit her tomorrow.”

“I know,” My mom whispers. “I know, sweetheart.”

“I am on my way.”

“No, please do not drive yourself. I’ll ask the driver to bring you home,” she says gently. “Or I can come get you.”

“No, Mom. I will come down myself.”

“Of course.”

She doesn’t say goodbye; she simply hangs up quietly, as if saying the word "bye" would somehow make me feel worse.

I don’t move for a long time. The house suddenly feels hollow as my mind races back to my childhood, back to Luisa.

The woman who practically raised me while my parents ruled empires. The woman who wiped my tears with the same hands that smacked a gun out of my teenage hands when I tried to follow my Cristóbal into trouble. She called memi amorcitoevery morning and made her arroz con leche with extra cinnamon just because she knew I liked it that way.

I knew she was sick.

I have been visiting her once a week, and I have always sent her flowers. I called her daily, and her response was always the same. “Tired, but better.” She said that the antibiotics were helping. That she’d be back on her feet soon, and I believed her.

My fingers fumble for my phone. I don’t even think about what I’m doing until I hear the sound of the line connecting and then Zasha’s voice.

“Yeah?”

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