Neither of us turns on the light. We stay silent, more so than usual. I think that in reality I don’t need to tell her, that in some way she already knows. She looks at me and I see her eyes cloud over with gray—not the gray of rain, but of smoke. It’s the last time we are ever together in the kitchen, and her gaze seems like a reply to my decision to escape: “This has been my life, and I understand that not everyone can be grateful.” We hug; it’s our goodbye.

I knew how it would be. For a while it would be hard to contact me, but still, aside from one call from a public phone, I never visited or contacted Aunt Nana again. Sacrifices, I told myself, and I went on with my life, a life that back then I thought belonged completely to me.

It was only at Aunt Nana’s funeral, five years later, that I saw her again. When I arrived, my mother greeted me with a brief and distant “Hello.” The wake was held at a funeral home in Independencia, and she was in charge of almost everything: the paperwork, greeting people, offering coffee, tea, cookies, placing the flowers around the room. Later that night, I ran into her outside. I was smoking a cigarette, and she came out to light one too. She had circles under her eyes, and she told me she hadn’t held the wake at the house because she didn’t live there anymore. I already knew that and I didn’t ask any questions, nor did she go on explaining. My father wasn’t at the funeral, and I also already knew about that, his absence.

Aunt Nana’s dress was navy blue, her favorite color; when I asked, my mother told me she’d chosen it before she died. She told me she had dressed the body, and that she hadn’t been able to put Aunt Nana’s dentures in because her jaw muscles were too rigid.

“How are you?” she asked. We hadn’t spoken since I’d left home.

“Fine,” I replied. “And you?”

“Fine.”

We were silent, waiting for the cigarettes to burn down. I wanted to talk to her, ask and answer, though I didn’t really know what about. As soon as I’d seen her I’d felt like crying, but I held back. I tried to look implacable at all times. Over the years a certain resistance had been forged in me, and there was nothing I could do now to overcome it. Maybe something similar had happened to her.

“She called for your father. Before she died she called his name several times,” she said after throwing the butt to the ground. “That’s what the nurses told me. She passed away in the early morning, and she’d been talking to herself, calling out for your father.”