PART 1

“Who did this to you?” I whispered. Her tears fell as she said, “Your mother and your brother forced me to sign everything over.”

I came home from duty with a medal in my bag and suspicion in my chest. My wife looked at me as if my shadow had learned to hurt her.

For six months, I had been stationed overseas, living on video calls and bad coffee, counting the days until I could hold Elena again. But the woman waiting in our house was not the Elena who used to run barefoot down the hallway when she heard my key. She stood in the kitchen, thinner, pale, her hands tucked into the sleeves of her sweater.

“Welcome home, Alejandro,” she said.

Not husband. Not love. Alejandro.

My mother, Doña Victoria, swept in before I could answer, glittering in pearls I had never bought her. Behind her stood my younger brother, Ricardo, wearing my watch, my jacket, and the grin of a man who had been sleeping well in another man’s life.

“Elena has been very emotional while you were gone,” Mother said, squeezing my shoulder too hard. “Don’t take it personally.”

Ricardo laughed. “Loneliness does strange things to women.”

Elena lowered her eyes.