My son had been buried for less than twenty-four hours when my daughter-in-law threw me out of his house.

I was still wearing black.

My funeral dress had a smear of cemetery mud along the hem, and my hands trembled so badly that I could barely hold the two suitcases she had packed for me.

They were old suitcases, the ones from the back of the storage closet, the ones with cracked handles and a smell of dust trapped in the lining.

Mariana placed them at my feet in the marble foyer as if she were setting trash outside the door.

Then she looked at me and said, “Go die on the mountain, you useless old woman.”

The house behind her was worth nearly four million dollars.

Neftali had bought it after years of work, after years of taking calls before sunrise and coming home with his shirt collar wilted from stress.

He had always said the house was not a trophy.

It was proof that the Reyes family had finally stepped out of survival.

Now my only child was gone, and his wife stood beneath the chandelier like a queen who had waited too long for her crown.

I stared at her, not because I did not understand, but because grief had made every movement slow.

The words reached me one at a time.

Go.

Die.

Mountain.

Useless.

Old.

Woman.

I had known Mariana disliked me.

A mother feels those things before anyone says them.

I felt it in the way she stopped laughing when I entered a room, in the way she thanked guests warmly for compliments on meals I had cooked, in the way she corrected my English in front of people who already understood me.

But hatred is different when it no longer has to wear manners.

“Neftali would not want this,” I said.

Her mouth curved.

Not into a smile exactly.

Something colder.

“Neftali is dead.”

Those three words emptied the foyer.

For a moment, I saw my son as a little boy again, asleep with one hand under his cheek, his black hair damp from fever while I sat beside his bed counting his breaths.

I saw him at sixteen, eating rice straight from the pot because he was too hungry to wait.

I saw him at forty-one, standing in that same foyer, kissing my forehead and saying, “Mom, this will always be your home.”

Always is a fragile word when the person who said it is no longer there to defend it.

I asked Mariana for one thing.

Not money.

Not furniture.

Not a bedroom.

Not even a week to mourn under the roof where my son had lived.

I asked for the framed photograph of Neftali from the hallway table.

It was my favorite one.

He was standing by the back garden, sleeves rolled up, smiling as if someone had called his name right before the camera clicked.

He looked alive in it.

Warm.

Annoyed and happy at the same time, the way he always looked when I fussed over him.

The moment I reached for it, Mariana stepped in front of me.

“Everything in this house belongs to me now,” she said.

Her voice was not angry.

That was what frightened me.

Anger would have been human.

Her voice was calm,