She never tried to compete with anyone.
She simply existed with a patience that made other people slow down.
We married three years later, in a small church outside San Antonio, Texas, with my sisters sitting proudly in the front row and my mother wiping tears from her eyes.
At the time I believed the blending of our families had gone smoothly.
Camila made every effort to welcome them.
When my sisters visited on weekends she cooked meals that filled the house with warm smells of roasted chicken, fresh tortillas, and cinnamon coffee. She asked about their jobs, their plans, their lives.
And for a while everything looked perfectly normal from the outside.
But if I am honest now, the small cracks had been visible much earlier than I allowed myself to admit.
They appeared first as comments disguised as harmless observations.
“Camila cooks nicely,” Veronica once said while tasting a spoonful of soup, “but Mom always added more seasoning.”
