First names.
Then dates.
Then places.
Then your face.
There are humiliations a man can prepare for and others he cannot. You could negotiate acquisitions across three time zones while your stock rose by the hour, but you could not make your mother look at you and know who you were. So you began converting helplessness into management. Specialists. Schedules. locked cabinets. Routine. If she could not remember you, then at least her decline would be efficient.
You sit straighter when the side door opens.
Lucía steps out into the service courtyard carrying a plastic basin. No uniform cap, hair tied back loosely, sleeves rolled to the elbows. She looks younger out here in the sunlight than she ever does in the house, younger and smaller, though there is something unhurried about her movements that bothers you all over again. She empties the basin into the flower bed by the wall. Water darkens the soil. Then she stands there a second, tilts her face toward the sky, and smiles.
Smiles.
In your house.
In the middle of a workday.
