Chương 8
“This is my family.”
Daniel’s expression changed, not into sympathy but something more difficult.
“That is why they expect you to return.”
Elena turned toward Priya. “Legally, what happens if I go back?”
“You may retrieve personal property. You may speak to your husband. You may also be pressured to sign documents, surrender devices, make statements, or enter treatment you have not chosen.”
“I’m not entering treatment.”
“Then do not sign anything describing you as impaired.”
“I can refuse.”
“Yes.”
“You think I shouldn’t go.”
“I think you should decide why you are going. If it is to negotiate, we can arrange conditions. If it is to prove you are not unstable by walking into a house controlled by people calling you unstable, that is not a negotiation.”
Elena looked again at the television.
Sebastián was now helping Doña Marcela into a car. His hand rested gently beneath his mother’s elbow.
The same hand he had raised toward Elena’s face.
“I want my laptop,” she said.
Priya nodded. “We request access through counsel.”
“I want the original foundation files.”
“You may not be entitled to remove them.”
“I want to look at Sebastián and ask whether he used my account.”
“That may feel necessary.”
“It is necessary.”
“No,” Priya said. “It is human. Those are not always the same.”
The sentence irritated Elena for the rest of the day.
By evening, the family’s attorneys had agreed to permit Elena thirty minutes inside the mansion the following morning, accompanied by counsel, to collect clothing, identification, medication, and personal devices. Company records were excluded. Sebastián would not be present.
Doña Marcela would.
Elena spent the night at Camila’s apartment instead of the hotel.
Camila lived above a bakery in Little Havana, in a building where the elevator shuddered between floors and the hallway smelled of sugar before sunrise. Her apartment had one bedroom, a sofa with a broken spring, and three potted plants she routinely forgot to water until their leaves folded in protest.
When Elena arrived wearing borrowed jeans and white sneakers, Camila hugged her so hard the signet ring pressed into Elena’s palm.
Then she stepped back.
“You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean normal terrible. Not rich-person terrible.”
“What is rich-person terrible?”
“Expensive sunglasses and a statement from a publicist.”
Elena looked toward the kitchen.
“You have coffee?”
“I have something that says coffee on the bag.”
They sat at the narrow table while delivery trucks growled outside. Camila wore a faded university shirt and had not brushed her hair. She kept glancing at Elena’s bare hand.
“Did you really leave the ring on a table?”
“Yes.”
“That was dramatic.”
“I know.”
“Did you plan it?”
“No.”
“Good. Planning it would make it worse.”
Camila poured too much milk into her coffee. “What happens to the ring?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want it back?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Camila noticed but did not challenge it.
Instead she asked, “Did he ever do that before?”
Elena rubbed the inside of her wrist.
“Raise his hand?”
“Anything.”
There had been a wineglass thrown into a sink. A door slammed so hard its hinge cracked. A hand around her elbow at a fundraiser, smiling for photographers while fingers tightened beneath silk. A night in Madrid when Sebastián stood between Elena and the hotel door, insisting they finish an argument before she left. There had also been apologies, jewelry, therapy appointments he attended twice, and months when the house felt peaceful enough to make earlier fear seem embarrassing.
“He never hit me,” Elena said.
Camila stared into her cup.
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I know.”
“Did you think he might?”
Elena looked toward the window. Across the street, a bakery employee stacked plastic crates while talking to someone through wireless earbuds. He dropped one, cursed, and kicked it into place.
“Last night,” she said, “I knew he might.”
Camila’s eyes filled. She blinked hard and became angry instead.
“I hate him.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I can start.”
“You liked him.”
“I liked the version who paid for Mom’s dental surgery and remembered my birthday.”
“That version exists.”
“So does the other one.”
The simplicity of it exhausted Elena.
At nine the next morning, she returned to the mansion.
Priya walked beside her. A court reporter did not come, but Priya wore a body camera openly after the family’s attorneys consented. Two representatives from the law firm waited inside. The house manager, Mrs. Bell, stood near the staircase with swollen eyes.
Doña Marcela sat on the cream chaise lounge.
The wedding ring was gone from the console.
Elena noticed immediately.
Marcela followed her gaze.
“I put it away.”
“Where?”
“Some things should not be left for staff to handle.”
“It was mine to leave.”
“It was a family heirloom.”
“It was purchased six months before the wedding.”
“With Valdés money.”
Priya stepped forward. “We are here for personal property only.”
Marcela looked at her as if she were a stain introduced by catering.
“Elena does not need a stranger speaking for her.”
“She is my attorney.”
“That can be changed.”
Elena felt the old reflex to smooth the room. It had made her effective at dinners, funerals, board retreats, and every holiday where Marcela insulted someone by asking a question softly enough to sound concerned.
She let the silence remain rough.
“Where is my ring?” Elena asked.
“Safe.”
“I did not ask whether it was safe.”
Marcela’s gaze moved to Elena’s right hand.
The signet ring hung on a plain chain Priya had purchased at a pharmacy. Elena wore it beneath her shirt, but its shape pressed visibly against the fabric.
Marcela stood.
“What is that?”
Elena covered it instinctively, then stopped.
She drew the chain out.
The color drained from Marcela’s face so gradually that someone who did not know her might have missed it.
One of the attorneys shifted his weight.
Marcela crossed the foyer in three measured steps.
“Give it to me.”
May you like
“No.”
“That belonged to my husband.”
