I returned to repair the fountain.
Then a broken door hinge.
Then a water pump.
Then the old greenhouse roof.
Sometimes I wondered whether she was inventing problems just to bring me back.
One evening, as rain tapped against the greenhouse glass, she found me retying a climbing rose.
“You are gentle with damaged things,” she said.
“I’m afraid they’ll charge me if I break them.”
She smiled, but her eyes stayed sad.
“Who taught you to joke whenever you are seen too clearly?”
“My mother.”
The smile vanished.
I noticed it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You look as if I said something terrible.”
“No.” She turned toward the wet glass. “You said something important.”
My mother, Elena Salazar, had died when I was eleven.
At least that was what I had been told.
She had collapsed during a storm after days of fever. There had been no hospital records I ever saw, no funeral I remembered clearly, only a closed casket, incense, wet shoes, and my father gripping my shoulder so tightly that his nails left half-moons in my skin.
For years, I dreamed of her walking away through rain.
In the dream, I called to her.
She never turned around.
Celia began asking about her carefully, as though approaching a wounded animal.
“What did Elena sing?”
“What perfume did she wear?”
“Did she ever talk about leaving San Jacinto?”
The questions unsettled me.
“How do you know her name?”
“You mentioned it.”
“I mentioned my mother. I don’t remember saying Elena.”
Celia’s fingers tightened around her teacup.
Then she said, “It is a common name.”
It was a weak answer.
I let it pass.
That was the first time I chose not to question something because I was afraid of the answer.
There would be many more.
By the time the fountain was repaired, I had fallen in love with her.
I fought it.
Of course I did.
She was thirty-two years older than I was. She had lived an entire life before mine had properly begun. Her hands carried age in fine blue veins. When she climbed stairs, she sometimes paused halfway and pretended to admire a painting until her breath returned.
But she also laughed with her whole face. She knew every bird by its call. She cursed elegantly when frustrated. She could discuss poetry over breakfast and negotiate construction prices by lunch. She had a habit of touching the edge of a table before leaving a room, as if thanking the furniture for holding her grief.
I loved her restraint.
I loved the sorrow she never displayed for sympathy.
I loved the sudden brightness in her when she forgot to be guarded.
And I loved how, in her presence, I did not feel poor, unfinished, or small.
I felt visible.
The night I told her, we were standing beside the fountain. The repaired angels poured silver ribbons of water into the basin. Moths circled the courtyard lamps.
“I have to stop coming here,” I said.
Celia did not move. “Why?”
“Because I look for excuses to come.”
“That is not a reason to stop.”
“It is when the excuse is not the truth.”
She lowered her eyes.
My pulse thudded in my throat.
“I think about you when I wake up. I think about things you said days later. I hear your car in town and turn before I see it. I know how this sounds.”
“How does it sound?”
“Like something I will regret saying.”
“Then perhaps say it properly.”
I swallowed.
“I love you.”
The fountain seemed suddenly too loud.
Celia closed her eyes.
For one terrifying second, I thought she might laugh.
Instead, she whispered, “You must not.”
“Why?”
“You do not understand what loving me will cost.”
“I’m not asking what it costs.”
“You should.”
“I’m asking whether you feel anything.”
Her face changed then. The composure broke, and beneath it I saw something raw, almost frightened.
She stepped toward me.
Her hand rose, hesitated, then touched my cheek.
“You make me remember who I was before fear,” she said.
It was not an answer.
It was more dangerous than an answer.
When my family found out, all hell broke loose.
My aunt Rosalba arrived at our house before breakfast, still wearing curlers beneath a headscarf.
“That woman has bewitched you.”
My cousin Tomás leaned against the refrigerator and looked at me with disgust.
“What you want is a mother, not a wife.”
My father said nothing at first.
He sat at the kitchen table with his hands wrapped around a chipped coffee cup, staring at the steam.
Then he asked, “Have you slept with her?”
The question felt like a slap.
“That is none of your business.”
“It becomes my business when my son humiliates himself before the whole town.”
“I am not humiliated.”
“You will be.”
His voice broke on the last word.
That was what stopped me.
Not the insult.
The pain.
He looked wounded in a way I had never seen, as if my love for Celia were not merely foolish but treacherous.
“She’ll use you,” he said. “And when she tires of you, she’ll abandon you.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I know more about women like her than you ever will.”
“What does that mean?”
He stood so quickly that the coffee spilled.
“It means I buried your mother. It means I raised you. It means I know what family costs.”
I stared at him.
“Celia never asked me for anything.”
“That is how people like her begin.”