Page 9 of Shattered Hearts

"She won't be there," Mama says.

"That's not the point."

"Then what is the point, Blanca, because from where I'm sitting the point is that your sister has been hiding in a cabin for a year and now she's about to spend thirty days in Cádiz and maybe, maybe, she will use that time to remember what she has."

“And what’s that?” I say.

The squid ink rice is still warm in the dish and the restaurant is full of the sound of other lunches and somewhere behind me a child is laughing at something and the sound of it is so ordinary and so far from where I am right now that it almost makes me want to put my head down on the table.

"A good life, Elena. A husband who loves her, whatever he's done. A beautiful house in Cádiz. Security. Do you know what it means to have security? Do you know what it means to the people in this family who didn't?"

"He cheated on me."

"All men cheat," Mama says.

My brothers look around the table, this time resting their phones on it.

"And you think that's a reason to stay," I say.

"I think it's a reason to think about more than just yourself. The family's name. Our reputation in this village. Do you know what people are saying about you?"

"What?" I say slowly.

"Elena." Dad's voice, quiet and level.

"No, I want to know." I pick up my wine glass. "Because what I plan to do is take him for every single penny he has. The Madrid apartment, the investments, and that house in Cádiz, which I will sell and give every cent of to charity, because I would rather watch it go to strangers than spend another morning in it pretending my life is quietly and genuinely good." I take a sip. "He can spend thirty days on his hands and knees if he likes. It won't change anything."

The table is very quiet.

"Elena." Dad again.

"I know," I say. "I know."

"No." I set my fork down. "She wants to talk about the fact that people in our village are saying that if I had lost weight that maybe he wouldn’t have cheated on me? Or that if I was prettier then he would have had kids with me….he had a baby with a whore, but yet it’s my fault!”

Nobody picks up a fork. Mama opens her mouth and then closes it. Dad looks at me with something I can't quite read, not anger exactly, something more complicated. Cecilia has gone very still in the particular way she has, present and unreadable. Blanca's hand finds mine again under the table.

And then from somewhere near the door, I hear it. A giggle. The particular, pointed kind that has a direction to it. I turn slightly in my seat and there are two women standing just inside the entrance being handed menus by Raul, and one of them has her hand over her mouth and the other one is pointing, not even bothering to be subtle about it, her finger aimed at our table with the bright uncomplicated cruelty of someone who has recognized a face from the news and decided that recognition is the same as permission.

I turn back to my plate.

I pick up my fork.

I take another mouthful of the arroz negro, which is still good, still warm, still the best thing I have eaten in three days, and I chew and I swallow and I do not give those two women at the door the satisfaction of watching my face do anything at all.

Blanca squeezes my hand.

She looks back at me and doesn't say anything because she doesn't need to. She drove four hours to Toledo in the rain when I called her at two in the morning six months ago because I couldn't remember how to stop crying. She brought her laptop and her research and sat at the cabin table for three days working in silence so I wouldn't be alone. She held my hand in the back of the car this morning and said nothing, because she knew there was nothing to say that would help, and she came anyway.

Mama doesn't touch her food. She sits with her wine glass and stares at me the way she has since I set my fork down, as if she's waiting for me to crack or apologize or both. Dad eats his meal with the concentration of a man who has decided the conversation is over, each forkful deliberate, his expression giving away absolutely nothing, which is its own kind of answer. Cecilia finishes her meal. My brothers finish theirs, thumbs already moving across their phones before the plates are cleared, already somewhere else entirely.

The restaurant fills and empties around us. Raul pours more water. The women by the door are long gone.

I finish my rice. It's very good. Always is.

Some things, at least, you can count on. Unlike not getting a divorce today.