“Elena,” Sergio said. “This is Valeria.”

Valeria looked at me. Her expression was careful. Sympathetic, almost. Like a nurse delivering bad news.

“We’re trying to do this without hurting you,” she said. Her voice was soft. “I know this is hard. But our baby needs somewhere stable to grow up. You understand that. Better than anyone.”

Better than anyone.

I stood there in the doorway with my purse on my shoulder.

I couldn’t say anything. My mouth wouldn’t work.

Before I could answer, I heard a key turn in the front door behind me.

I knew whose key it was before the door even opened.

My mother-in-law, Ofelia, had a spare. I’d given it to her myself, nine years ago, when she had her hip surgery and I was driving over three times a day to bring her meals. I’d given it to her so she could let herself in if she ever needed anything.

She’d never given it back.

Ofelia came through the door like a woman walking into her own house. She was seventy-one. Small, sharp, with silver hair pulled back in a tight bun and a black handbag hanging from her elbow.

She walked right past me. She didn’t say hello. She didn’t look at me.

She went straight to the sofa and wrapped both arms around Valeria.

“Mija,” she said. “Oh, mija. I’m finally going to be a grandmother!”

She held Valeria’s face in both her hands. She kissed her on both cheeks. She put her hand on Valeria’s stomach, right next to Valeria’s hand.

“Finally,” she said again. “Finally. After all these years.”

Then she turned around and looked at me.

For the first time since she’d walked in.

“You had twenty years,” Ofelia said, “to give my son a family. Twenty years, Elena. The least you can do now is step aside. With some dignity.”

I’d taken care of that woman.

When she had her hip surgery, I took two weeks off work to sit with her in the hospital. I learned how to help her in and out of the bathtub. I drove her to physical therapy twice a week for three months, because Sergio said he couldn’t get away from the office.

When her husband died, eight years ago, I planned the funeral. I called the funeral home. I picked out the flowers. I wrote the obituary, because Sergio said he couldn’t think straight.

Every Christmas Eve for twenty years, I cooked bacalao and romeritos and pozole for thirty people, in this apartment, in this kitchen. Ofelia’s sisters. Her cousins. Her nephews and their kids.

And every single Christmas, somebody would ask. At the table. In front of everybody.

¿Y los niños, Elena? ¿Para cuándo?

And Ofelia would sigh. And say, “Well, God has His reasons.” And look at me.