“Yes.”
“Why?”
He pulled out the chair across from me and lowered himself into it.
“You paid on time.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No,” he agreed. “It doesn’t.”
My hands began to shake.
For three years, I had lived with the fear that he might cash every check at once.
I had counted that money over and over.
I had worried about one mistake destroying the little stability Trixie and I had built.
I pushed the box toward him.
“Mr. Alvarez, I need you to explain this.”
He studied the table.
Then he said, “My daughter was named Sofia.”
I stopped moving.
He nodded toward the wall.
The woman beside him in several photographs was not his wife.
I could see it now.
She had his eyes and the same serious mouth.
“She had a little girl,” he continued. “Her name was Camila.”
I waited.
“Sofia married young. The man was charming at first. Everyone liked him.”
His jaw tightened.
“Then he began controlling everything. The money. Her clothes. Her friends. He made sure she had nowhere to go.”
My anger faded.
Mr. Alvarez rubbed his thumb against the scar on his hand.
“She called me once,” he said. “She asked if she and Camila could stay here.”
“What did you say?”
His eyes closed for a moment.
“I told her to go home and work things out with her husband.”
The clock continued ticking.
I could barely breathe.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because I was stubborn. Because I thought marriage was a promise you kept, even when it hurt.”
His voice cracked on the final word.
I looked at the photographs again.
“What happened to them?”
He did not answer right away.
When he finally looked at me, the truth was already on his face.
“They died in a car accident six weeks later.”
I covered my mouth.
