She softened her tone immediately.
‘I have to be somewhere soon.
Please don’t worry.’
She kissed my cheek before leaving.
It was a light, almost formal kiss, but her lips lingered just enough to confuse me.
At the door she stopped, still facing away from me, and said something I didn’t understand until much later.
‘Please don’t make this harder than it already is.’
Then she left.
I stood alone in the hotel room with the ocean beyond the glass and a feeling in my stomach that wouldn’t settle.
The stain on the sheet wasn’t large, but it had rearranged the air in the room.
I told myself she had explained it.
I told myself I was being dramatic.
I told myself a hundred reasonable things on the way to my morning meetings.
None of them worked.
I couldn’t concentrate that day.
Numbers blurred.
Site plans meant nothing.
Between meetings I opened my phone and stared at our newly reactivated message thread.
Are you okay?
I sent it around noon.
Her reply came almost an hour later.
I’m fine.
Don’t worry.
That was all.
I tried calling that evening.
No answer.
The next day, between appointments, I stopped near a pharmacy across from a private medical building to grab a bottle of water.
I was halfway back to the car when I saw Elena coming out of the clinic entrance.
She was wearing sunglasses even though the sky had turned cloudy.
In one hand she carried a folded paper, and in the other a small bag from a pharmacy.
She walked carefully, as if every step needed to be negotiated with her body.
My chest tightened.
I called her name.
She froze for a second before turning toward me.
The smile she gave me was impressive in the saddest way.
It was the smile of someone trying to hold a wall in place with bare hands.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘Nothing important,’ she said.
‘Just a checkup.
I’ve had migraines.’
‘Migraines?’
‘Carlos.’ She looked around, almost pleading.
‘Please.’
I wanted to push harder.
I wanted to take the paper from her hand and force the truth into daylight.
But something in her expression stopped me.
Not because I believed her.
Because I could see how badly she needed me to pretend that I did.
Before I left Cancun, I went to the resort where she worked.
I told myself I needed closure, or at least clarity.
A receptionist called her, and Elena came out through a service corridor instead of the main lobby, as if she didn’t want anyone to
see us together.
She looked tired.
More than tired.
Hollowed out.
‘I was worried about you,’ I said.
‘I know.’
