She came through the back door without knocking, which was exactly what Elena always did. And Nina had spent years learning to accept it.
Elena had a key. She used that key whenever she felt like it, which was very often, and she always brought some kind of food, which made it a little harder to complain.
“Mija,” Elena said, setting the dish on the counter. She gave Nina a quick, practiced glance, one she had perfected over decades of mothering David. Although Nina was her daughter-in-law, as far as Elena was concerned, she was her daughter.
She checked her for weight loss, dark circles under her eyes, signs that she wasn’t eating, sleeping, or doing the basic work of just remaining alive.
“You look thin.”
“You always say I look thin.”
“Because you are always thin. This is not a mystery.” She opened the refrigerator and made a sound that was a bit of a sigh, but had a little judgment and prayer mixed in. “Nina, there’s nothing in here.”
“There’s yogurt.”
“Yogurt is not food. Yogurt is what food eats.” She closed the refrigerator. “I brought mole con pollo. You will eat it today, not tomorrow. Not a maybe. Today.”
“Elena, don’t?—”
“I promised my son, in all my prayers, that I would take care of his family, and I cannot take care of a family that lives on yogurt and frozen waffles.”
There it was.
Her son.
Elena always said it in the way she said everything about David, with a fierceness that left absolutely no room for argument. One did not argue with Elena. There was no reason to because you would never win.
Her grief was very different from Nina’s.
Nina’s grief was a fog, gray and suffocating, muffling everything around her. It was a monster that stole every good thing.
Elena’s grief was a bonfire, loud, visible, and consuming. She carried it not as a burden, but as a badge of honor, as proof that she had loved someone so big and survived losing him, and she intended to honor him every single day until God took her too.
Nina sometimes envied Elena’s grief. At least Elena could feel hers. She could feel emotions. She still had a purpose, even if that purpose was driving Nina crazy.
Elena was moving through the kitchen now, wiping down counters that did not need wiping, rearranging things that did not need rearranging, her small hands always busy because Elena’s hands could never be still.
She was barely five feet tall, but she filled every room she entered. David had gotten his warmth and stubbornness from her.
“I heard about the birthday,” Elena said.
“It was nice. Claire cooked. We had cake. It was great.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Lucia told me about the napkin.”
Well, of course she did.
Lucia and Elena had a gossip pipeline that operated entirely outside of Nina’s knowledge or consent. They texted in Spanish, which Nina understood about 60%, and the other 40% was almost certainly about her.
“It’s just something fun,” Nina said. “Claire, Harper, and I are going to try new things. One time a month.”
Elena stopped wiping the counter. She turned and looked at Nina. The face Elena was trying not to make was the most obvious. She was trying not to cry, not to hope, and not to say the wrong thing, all at the same time.
“Good,” Elena said.
