It is visible, almost physical—the way the air tightens around his body. Diego stops so suddenly the heel of one foot lifts and hangs there for a beat. He blinks once, twice, as if his mind is struggling to reorder the morning into something that makes sense.
“What the hell is he doing here?”
Roberto does not stand.
“That’s your first question?” he asks.
Diego’s eyes move to your cheek, and you watch the exact moment memory arrives. His face doesn’t fill with shame. Not immediately. It fills with irritation. Calculation. Defensive anger scrambling to get there before conscience does.
He looks away.
“You called him?” he says to you, like you are the one who crossed a line.
“Yes,” you say.
He gives a short laugh with no humor in it. “Wow. So that’s what this is? You running to Daddy because you can’t handle a fight?”
“A fight?” Roberto says.
Diego finally turns toward him, shoulders squaring. “Stay out of this.”
Roberto’s voice stays level. “I’ve stayed out of it for eight years. Look where that got us.”
You feel the urge to step between them, not because either man is right but because for so much of your life you have been the one who absorbed impact before it reached anyone else. You softened things. Redirected things. Explained away what could not be defended. You turned yourself into a bridge until everyone got used to walking across you.
But today you remain where you are.
“Sit down, Diego,” you say.
“No.”
“Yes.”
There is something in your tone—something so unfamiliar even you can hear it—that makes him pause. He stares at you, maybe waiting for the softness to return, for the plea to rise up behind the command. But it doesn’t. There is only the truth of a woman who did not sleep and decided in the dark that fear would no longer be the organizing principle of her own home.
After a beat, he drops into the chair across from Roberto.
The table between them looks absurdly normal. Eggs. fruit. coffee. juice. Sunlight on the spoon handles. It almost makes you sick.
Diego reaches for a tortilla.
“Don’t,” you say.
His hand stops.
