Make Them Regret It Chapter 31
My grandmother didn’t interrupt me once.
Only after I finished did she look down and see the old, faded scars on my wrist.
“They did that to you, too?”
“Yes.”
She raised a hand as if to touch me, then hesitated, as if afraid she might hurt me. In the end, she only took my fingertips lightly in hers.
“In her letters, your mother always said Antonio treated her well, that the children were all dutiful. She said once you were married, she’d come back and stay with me for a while.”
“I waited for her for so many years.”
“How could she die in her own home?”
After that last sentence, she finally began to cry.
Not loudly. Just a slow, silent weeping that bent her back.
I knelt at her feet and let her hold me.
Neither of us slept that night.
Just before dawn, my grandmother wiped her tears and took an empty jewelry box from a cabinet.
“Take me to New York.”
“I’m bringing my daughter home.”
When my father saw my grandmother, he was still holding that old cloak.
He had kept vigil by my mother’s grave for less than a month, but he looked ten years older.
“Mom.”
My grandmother didn’t answer.
She walked to the headstone, saw my mother’s name, and brushed away the dead leaves resting on it, one by one.
My father sank to his knees.