You lean back and think of the small things that have irritated you for days. The untouched blue sedative pill in the medication tray. The old bolero station drifting from the den one afternoon when the market channel should have been on. A knitted shawl from one of the upstairs closets draped over your mother’s lap even though the house was climate-controlled at a constant seventy-two. Evidence, you decided, of sentimental chaos. Disorder disguised as kindness.
You hate disorder.
Disorder is how diseases spread.
It is how companies fail.
It is how your father’s empire almost collapsed before you dragged it back upright with sixteen-hour days, brutal decisions, and the refusal to let anyone accuse you of softness again.
You check the time.
Fifteen minutes.
Then twenty.
The mansion remains still, its upper windows reflecting the pale afternoon glare. Somewhere beyond those walls, Lucía should be following the schedule you set on the kitchen board. Vegetable puree at one. Liquid supplement at four. Monitor agitation. Measure compliance. Maintain routine. That is how the neurologist explained dementia to you when your mother first began wandering through conversations like someone stepping into the wrong rooms by mistake. Structure, Mr. Valdés. Structure is survival.
And yet even with structure, your mother kept disappearing in smaller ways.
