“Just work,” Mateo replied too quickly.
“You’ve been saying that a lot,” Elena said.
Mateo sighed. “You worry too much.”
The words stung.
At the market, a vendor leaned toward Elena. “Your husband… he’s often in the city now, yes?”
“Yes,” Elena answered.
The woman hesitated. “May God protect your marriage.”
That night, Elena confronted Mateo again.
“Is there someone else?”
Mateo looked away. “Why do you keep asking?”
“Because I feel her sitting with us,” Elena said. “Even when she’s not here.”
Silence answered her.
Rosa called Elena into the kitchen one afternoon.
“A wife must know her place,” Rosa said without turning around.
Elena swallowed. “And what is my place?”
“To protect the family,” Rosa replied. “Even from the truth.”
“Do you know about her?” Elena asked.
Rosa finally faced her. “Men stray. Mothers clean the mess.”
“So I am supposed to endure?”
Rosa’s voice softened, but her words hardened. “I endured. You will too.”
Elena realized then that Rosa had always been inside the marriage.
Elena met her on a rainy afternoon.
“My name is Lila,” the woman said first.
Elena nodded. “I know.”
Lila clasped her hands. “I didn’t know he was married at first.”
“And when you did?” Elena asked.
“I stayed,” Lila admitted. “Because he said he felt trapped.”
Elena’s voice trembled. “And what about me?”
Lila looked down. “I never wanted to steal your life.”
Rain hammered the windows, loud enough to cover Elena’s tears.
Elena stood in front of Mateo.
“Say it,” she demanded. “Say her name.”
Mateo closed his eyes. “Lila.”
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t know,” he whispered.
“That’s worse,” Elena said. “Because it means you loved neither of us enough to choose.”
Mateo’s voice broke. “I was afraid.”
“So you let me bleed quietly?” Elena asked.
He had no answer.
At dawn, Elena packed her clothes.
Rosa blocked the door. “If you leave, you shame us.”
Elena met her eyes. “If I stay, I disappear.”
Mateo whispered, “Please don’t go.”
“Not like this,” Elena replied. “Not with three people in my heart.”
She walked out as the sun rose.
Months later, Mateo said quietly, “I went to therapy.”
Elena raised an eyebrow. “For yourself, or for me?”
“For the first time,” he said, “for myself.”
Lila’s last message echoed in Elena’s mind: Choose dignity.
“I don’t want the old marriage,” Elena told Mateo. “Can you accept that?”
He nodded. “I can wait.”
By the sea, Mateo spoke first. “There are only two now.”
Elena corrected him gently. “There are only two if we keep choosing each other.”
Mateo smiled sadly. “I will choose loudly this time.”
Elena took his hand. “Then we begin again—not as husband and wife, but as two honest people.”
The waves answered, steady and calm.