The House That Remembered
The banging came again.
It was not really a knock.
It was a show.
The kind of loud, open-handed pounding people use when they want the neighbors peeking through curtains, choosing sides before they even know the truth.
I stood behind the curtain, barefoot, still wrapped in the robe I had tied around my waist so tightly it felt like armor. The living room still smelled faintly of the coffee I had made and forgotten to drink. Outside, Doña Lupita was still making a scene.
“My son paid for everything!” she shouted. “Everything! She’s unstable! She locked him out of his own home!”
One officer looked uncomfortable. The younger one kept staring at the door like he wished he had been sent to handle a missing bicycle instead of this circus.
I opened the door only as far as the chain would allow.
