That morning in Cancun, I thought I was looking at a stain.
What I was really looking at was the first crack in a truth big enough to split open everything I thought I understood about my ex-wife, my marriage, and the night that had just made me believe the past could come back to life.
I had just stepped out of bed when I saw it: a small red mark against the white hotel sheet.
Not much.
Just enough.
Enough to stop me cold.
Elena was standing by the window in my white shirt, the curtains breathing in and out with the Caribbean wind.
For a second she looked almost exactly the way she used to look on Sunday mornings in our apartment in Mexico City, before work swallowed us whole, before resentment became our second language, before silence became easier than tenderness.
Then she turned, saw where I was staring, and all the softness left her face.
‘Elena, are you hurt?’ I asked.
She blinked too quickly.
‘No.
It’s nothing.’
Her answer came fast, almost rehearsed.
She crossed the room, grabbed the edge of the sheet, and folded it over the stain as if hiding it would erase what I had already seen.
‘It’s probably just my cycle coming early,’ she said, not quite meeting my eyes.
That should have settled it.
It didn’t.
Because I knew Elena.
Or at least I used to.
