"I believed, for ten full minutes, that you were sleeping with someone," she said. "I invented her face. I invented the motel. I invented the way you would look at me afterward and lie. Do you understand what that does to a body? To stand in your own family room and smell another woman's life on your child's wrists and invent the end of everything?"
Marco's eyes shone. He nodded.
"And the worst part," Elena continued, "is that the truth is not kinder. The truth is my sister. The truth is my father dying while you and Carmen held a private ministry I was not invited to join. The truth is you decided I was too fragile or too angry or too unfinished to be trusted with my own grief."
"That is not—"
"It is exactly what you decided," Elena said. "Dress it in whatever soft language you want. You chose for me."
They sat in the rain-sound for a long time. Elena did not cry. Marco did not reach for her hand. The reading lamp hummed its small electrical hymn. Somewhere in the toy basket, a plastic dinosaur lay on its side as if exhausted by the day's play.
Finally Elena said, "I want to talk to Carmen. Not tomorrow. Now. Call her."