For one second you consider knocking again. Not to thank him. Just to look at his face once more and let him know the bag did not end up in the garbage where appearances wanted it to go. But the letter is right. Returning now would only drag the new truth back into the old house before you have the strength to defend it.
So you adjust your grip on the bag, lift your small purse onto your shoulder, and keep walking.
The bus station is three neighborhoods away.By the time you buy your ticket to Oaxaca, your phone has begun buzzing.
Alejandro.
Of course.
He must have gotten home or emerged from wherever he was hiding and found the room emptier than cowardice expected. You stare at his name until the screen stops glowing. Then comes Lucía, your sister-in-law, which almost makes you laugh from the sheer audacity. Then doña Carmen. Then Alejandro again.
You answer none of them.
At the station, the benches are hard, the air smells of diesel, tamales, and human patience, and the world is full of people carrying more visible suffering than yours. Women with children asleep on their laps. Men with taped suitcases. A teenage girl holding a box with air holes cut into the sides because something living inside keeps shifting. Nobody cares that your marriage ended today. Nobody knows that you left one house empty-handed and discovered another life in a trash bag ten minutes later.
