Because you could survive Marisol’s cruelty. Women like her are almost simple once you accept that control is their religion. They decorate it with pearls and expensive perfume, but beneath the polish, it is still just hunger. Álvaro was harder. Álvaro kissed your forehead in public. Álvaro knew how to touch your lower back in crowded rooms and make people think you were cherished. Álvaro spoke fluent tenderness when witnesses were present.
Then, at home, he became a cold little king with his mother’s values and your exhaustion under his heel.
You close your eyes and try not to think about the kitchen.
You fail.
You see it too clearly. The steel bowls stacked by the sink. The grocery list clipped to the fridge. The giant aluminum trays Marisol dropped off the day before, already labeled in her handwriting. The command in everything. Start before three. Keep the seafood cold. Make the puff pastry fresh. Do not use too much garlic. Wear the cream blouse, not black, because black looks “staff.”
That part still burns.
Not because of the color. Because of the accuracy. Marisol never saw you as family. She saw you as labor with a wedding ring.
The plane lands in Lisbon just after five.
You chose Lisbon because it was the first affordable flight leaving before dawn and because the city felt far enough away to shock your life into a new shape. Not forever, maybe. You had not planned forever when you booked the ticket with trembling fingers and a half-charged phone. You had planned escape. Sometimes that is the only honest ambition the body can manage.
At baggage claim, you switch your phone on.
