For a few seconds after my mother said she could not congratulate me for “defying God’s will,” no one moved.

did not feel like a wound reopening.

They felt like something draining.

Years later, when Lucía was old enough to ask why she had so many people crying in her baby photos, I told her the gentle version first.

“You were wanted very much,” I said.

“By you?”

“By me. By your father. By your great-grandmother. By your grandfather. And eventually, in a better continue reading …