The alert came right on time, just like it always did – nine o’clock on the first day of every month.

I didn’t bother checking my phone. I already knew what it was. My bank confirming that the $300 transfer had gone through successfully.

Recipient: Doña Clara—my former mother-in-law.

Or more accurately, the mother of the woman who had once been my entire universe… and my deepest wound.

It had been five years, three months, and two days since Marina disappeared from my life. I never liked calling it her “death,” even though logic insisted otherwise. To me, she hadn’t died. She had vanished—leaving behind an empty side of the bed and a silence so loud it echoed through every room of the house we had built with so much hope.

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