“Of course,” I told her. “This is your home too.”
A few months turned into a year. A year turned into two. And each time I hinted about her finding a place of her own, she would smile and say, “Soon, Dad. Just a little longer.”
I swallowed my loneliness and told myself this was what family did.
Then Natalia met Andrés.
He was forty-two, divorced, with a ten-year-old son named Bruno. In the beginning, he seemed decent—polite, helpful, affectionate with the kids. Natalia looked brighter around him, like she had finally remembered how to hope.
“Dad,” she told me, “Andrés is the man I’ve waited for my whole life.”
I wanted to believe her.
I truly did.
The “Temporary” Guests
What Natalia didn’t say at first was that Andrés came with more than just a child. He came with parents—Roberto and Miriam, seventy-five and seventy-three.
According to Andrés, they had sold their home to downsize, but something went wrong with the apartment paperwork. Suddenly, they had nowhere to go.
