PART 1
“Don’t even take off your mourning clothes, Verónica. Take your bag and leave, because this apartment is now family property.”
Verónica Salgado stood motionless in the doorway, her black dress clinging to her body in the Mexico City heat, her hair still scented with the tuberoses from the funeral. That same afternoon, she had buried Simón Treviño. Returning to her apartment in Roma Norte, she expected only silence, darkness, and the cruel knowledge that her beloved would not answer from the living room.
But when she opened the door, she saw a different sight.
Her mother-in-law, Doña Graciela, stood in the middle of the dining room as if supervising a move. Around her, eight of Simón’s relatives were packing clothes, books, watches, cables, documents, and even photos into open suitcases on the sofa.
The sofa where Simón read every evening.
My cousin was rummaging through his desk drawers. My uncle was wrapping the Italian espresso machine Verónica and Simón had bought in Oaxaca in newspaper. Two nephews were carrying boxes toward the hallway. On the dining room table was a handwritten list:
Elegant clothes. Computer. Important documents. Watches. Property deeds. Credit cards. Keys.
At the entrance, on a small table, sat Simón’s temporary urn, surrounded by wilted flowers. No one seemed to notice it.
Verónica felt something inside her break, but it wasn’t tears. It was something colder.
“What are you doing in my house?” she asked.
Doña Graciela didn’t even pretend to be embarrassed. She lifted her chin with the expression of a woman accustomed to giving orders, weeping and threatening at the same time.
“Not your house. My son’s house. And since Simón is gone, it belongs to us.”
“This apartment was ours.”
“You were his wife, not his owner,” Graciela replied. “Don’t be fooled. You won’t stay here and live off something you didn’t earn.”
My cousin, Mariana, giggled as she took the files out of her desk.
“Besides, we already checked. There’s no will. So you better not make a fool of yourself.”
Verónica glanced at the suitcases. One held Simón’s carelessly folded shirts. Another held his laptop. Another was full of books with his notes attached to small yellow sticky notes.
“Who let you in?”
Graciela took a key out of her designer handbag and showed it as if it were a deed of ownership.
“I’m his mother. I always had the key.”
Verónica’s eyes burned. Simón had told her months earlier that he suspected his mother was holding a copy. He asked her to change the lock, but then changed his mind.
“I don’t want to argue with her anymore,” she told him then. “Just set boundaries.”
But even in his illness, Simón understood his family better than anyone else.
Verónica walked over to the desk as Mariana opened a deep drawer.
“Don’t touch it.”
Mariana turned around with a crooked smile.
