Then at Diego.
He looked devastated.
“I didn’t yell,” he said. “I swear.”
I believed him.
Isabel had simply inherited fear from a world she did not remember but had lived inside me.
I knelt.
“Baby,people are more important than vases.”
She sniffed.
“Even expensive ones?”
“Especially expensive ones.”
Diego threw the broken pieces away himself.
Later, he said quietly, “I hate what I made you feel while you were carrying them.”
I looked at him.
“I do too.”
He nodded.
No defense.
That was growth.
Not redemption.
Growth.
When the girls turned five, Isabel asked why Daddy lived in a different house.
I knew the question would come.
I had practiced answers.
Still, my throat tightened.
“Because sometimes adults hurt each other and cannotstay married safely. But Daddy and I both love you.”
Lucía asked, “Did Daddy hurt you?”
Diego happened to be there.
