Part Seven: Tuesday
There is a moment, in conversations like this one, when the thing that needed to happen has happened and what remains is logistics. I recognized it when it came.
“Thank you for coming to dinner,” I said. “The food will be donated to the shelter in the village. They do extraordinary work.” I looked at Valentina. “Will you coordinate with the kitchen?”
“Of course.”
I looked back at the table.
Thirty-two people. Some of them — a few — were looking at me with something that was not hostility or shame but genuine recalibration, a visible attempt to fit what they now knew into the space where something else had been. I did not hold the others against them. They had been living inside the Cortés family story for their entire lives. Revising it in an afternoon was not a reasonable expectation.
Paola had not said a word since the terrace. She was standing slightly apart from the group, and she was looking at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before, which was undefended. I held her gaze for a moment and she looked down.
“You’re throwing us out,” Doña Teresa said, and it came out smaller than she had intended.
“I’m concluding dinner,” I said. “You’re welcome to walk back to your cars at whatever pace is comfortable.”
“On Easter Sunday — ”
“On Easter Sunday, in a house that belongs to me, after a meal I provided, I’m asking you to leave at a reasonable hour. This is not unusual behavior.”
I signaled to Ernesto, who was waiting near the terrace entrance.
“Trash is taken out on Tuesdays,” someone near the back said, quietly.
It was one of the cousins. The one I had always slightly preferred, who had never said anything openly cruel but had never said anything openly kind either, and who was now, apparently, providing commentary on Doña Teresa’s exit.
I almost smiled.
“It’s Tuesday,” I said. “Please drive safely.”
