Laura lifted both hands.
“How were we supposed to know every little problem? You both always acted happy to have us.”
“We were happy to see you,” I said.
“That did not mean we were happy to serve you without being asked.”
She rolled her eyes, but less confidently than before.
Carlos turned another page.
José had recorded no dramatic accusations.
That was what made the notebook difficult to dismiss.
He had written dates, expenses, repairs, arrivals, and departures.
Beside some weekends, he added one quiet sentence.
Benita did not sit down until everyone went to bed.
Or:
They thanked me for the meat but not her for cooking it.
Or:
Carlos said they would arrive Friday.
He did not ask whether Friday was convenient.
The entries were not the complaints of an angry man.
They were observations from someone who had watched the woman beside him slowly disappear into the role her family expected her to perform.
Elena shifted her weight.
“We brought food,” she said, pointing toward the coolers.
“We were not expecting you to provide everything.”
“You brought meat for the grill,” I said.
“Who brought breakfast for twelve? Who brought towels? Soap? Clean sheets? Who planned to wash the pans after you finished eating?”
She looked toward the trucks.
No one answered.
The truth was packed inside those vehicles alongside the suitcases.
They had brought what made the weekend enjoyable for them.
Everything that made it possible had been assigned to me without discussion.
Diego leaned against the gate.
“Fine.
We should have called.
But locking everyone out is extreme.”
I studied him.
Diego had once left three bags of rubbish beside the kitchen door because he said he could not find the outside bins.
The bins had been in the same place since he was a child.
“What would have happened if I had called Carlos and asked him not to come?” I asked.
Diego did not respond.
Carlos did.
“I would have thought something was wrong with you.”
“There,” I said.
“That is why the gate is locked.”
His jaw tightened.
I continued.
“You would not have accepted no as an answer.
You would have called Laura.
Laura would have called Diego.
Elena would have said I was becoming difficult.
By the time you arrived, all of you would have decided that my refusal was an illness instead of a decision.”
Laura’s face flushed because we both knew I had described exactly what would have happened.
Carlos flipped forward through the notebook, searching for something he could use against me.
He found the entry about the family group chat.
José had died before they removed me from it, but I had written that page myself beneath his final entry.
My handwriting was smaller and less certain than his.
I had recorded the moment Carlos took my phone, tapped the screen, and said the group was being reorganized for working adults.
I wrote the exact words he used when I asked why my own children needed a family conversation without their mother.
You would not understand what we discuss.
