Your father lets out one short, bitter laugh. “He found us because he was following the woman who feeds us.”
Your mother is still smiling.
She reaches one hand toward you, but not in recognition. In habit. In the way confused old people reach for the nearest warm shape when memory has broken into pieces too small to hold. “Rosita,” she says again, softer now. “Did you bring the broth?”
The sound that leaves your chest is not quite a sob and not quite a gasp.
You kneel in front of her because your legs stop belonging to you otherwise. Up close, she looks smaller than your memory has allowed. Her skin is fine and paper-thin. The line of her jaw has sharpened. Her lips are dry. There is a bruise-colored shadow beneath both eyes, and the little silver cross she used to wear every day hangs loose against a collarbone that was never supposed to show this clearly.
“Mamá,” you manage.
She blinks at the word, almost startled by it. For one impossible second you think some hidden switch has flipped, that maybe her eyes will clear and she’ll see you. Instead she smiles again, absent and tender and devastating. “You shouldn’t cry, mija,” she says. “Your brother will worry.”
Something in you folds inward.
Your father looks away first. Not to spare you. To spare himself. His hands are twisted with arthritis, and now that you can see them closely, you understand why they felt familiar from behind the broken wall. They are still your father’s hands—broad, blunt-fingered, scarred from fields and tools and the kind of work that doesn’t leave soft men behind. Only now they tremble when he reaches for the enamel cup on the crate beside the bed.
Consuelo crosses the room quietly, takes the cup from him, and helps your mother sip water.
She does it with the same careful patience you saw the day before. No fuss. No performance. Just the intimate rhythm of someone who has done this many times and learned where pride hurts older people most. When she turns back to you, there is no accusation in her face. That is somehow worse than anger.
“How long?” you ask.
It comes out hoarse.
Your father answers before Consuelo can. “Long enough.”
He doesn’t say more, so you do what you never used to do. You ask again.
“How long has she been like this?”
