You take your own seat at the head of the table—not because the table was designed that way, but because this morning it is. You fold your hands together once. Unfold them. Then you look at your son the way you have avoided looking at him for months, maybe years: directly, without cushioning him from himself.
“Last night,” you say, “you hit me.”
He exhales sharply through his nose. “I was drunk.”
“That is not an answer.”
He shrugs. “I said I was drunk.”
Roberto leans forward. “You think being drunk means it didn’t happen?”
Diego snaps, “I said stay out of it.”
“And I’m telling you,” Roberto says, each word clipped and dangerous, “that you put your hand on your mother one time, and you don’t get to decide who’s in this conversation.”
The two men stare at each other with the old resemblance between them thrown into cruel relief. Same dark eyes. Same broad shoulders. Same temper, once upon a time, though only one of them ever learned how expensive rage can be.
You know that resemblance is part of what has haunted Diego all these years.
After Roberto left, Diego was fifteen and old enough to understand abandonment but still too young to survive it without making myths out of it. In one myth, his father was a traitor who walked away because his family wasn’t enough. In another, his father was a judge whose absence proved everyone left because Diego himself was impossible to love. Neither story was fully true. Neither story was fully false. Families rarely break under a single clean reason.
Roberto did leave.
But he did not vanish.
He sent money every month. Called more than Diego would answer. Showed up at birthdays until the scenes became unbearable. Stood outside soccer games where Diego refused to look at him. Tried, then tried badly, then tried less, which is often how love fails—not all at once, but in discouraged installments.
You had your own anger toward Roberto.
Still do, in places.
