It took everything in her to lift her face. Her eyes were wet, ringed with tiredness. Lines that I had never really seen now parecían profundísimas.

“I was just helping, mijo,” she whispered. “It’s nothing.”

Nothing.

She said “nothing” while kneeling on stone, with my children tied to her back, her legs trembling.

“Since when have you been doing this?” I asked softly.

She hesitated. Lauren jumped in.

“I already told you,” Lauren said, her voice taking on that sweet tone that always felt one note too high. “She can’t sit still. She keeps saying she wants to feel part of the home, part of the family. I just give her something to do.”

“I give her something to do.”

Like she was talking about a pet.

I closed my eyes for a second, and in that dark space a list of memories lined up like puzzle pieces I had refused to put together:
– The untouched prescription bottles on my mother’s nightstand because she “didn’t want to be a cost.”