“Why hasn’t he called?” I ask through gritted teeth. There’s anger deep down in my stomach. The more I’ve thought about it, the harder I find it to believe that Pa would do something like this—that he would leave without telling us exactly what his plan is.

“He will,” Ma says softly. “I know he will.” She lets out a long breath, and I do the same, telling myself that there’s no use holding on to that anger—that maybe Pa will reach out before we know it, and then we’ll be able to start figuring everything out so Sophie and I can go to Mexico.

Before dinner, Ma calls again to let us know that she still hasn’t been able to get in touch with him, and she stays on the line much longer than she needs to, probably just feeling lonely. This time, it’s me who tries to comfort her. “He must be busy—he’s probably just trying to find his way around the city.”

At ten—nine in Ma’s time zone—she calls once again, and we watch Pasiones de tu Corazón together. After all the stress of today, none of us wants to talk about Pa anymore. We don’t have the energy to keep asking ourselves the same questions, and so we somehow manage to make it feel almost like old times. If I pretend hard enough, it feels as though Ma is sitting right next to me.

“I never imagined my life would turn out this way,” she says when we’re right in the middle of the episode. “I remember when I first got to the US—the pain I felt leaving my family behind. I remember crying at night because I missed my mother so much, but I always told myself that it would be worth it. And then I met your dad, and had you, and later on Sophie… and there was a point where I thought to myself, This is it. This is the reason why I put myself through all that. Now I have my own family, and all of it was worth it. I never thought I’d feel this type of longing again—that I’d feel this desperation to have my family near.”

Amara, the female lead on Pasiones, screams loudly in that moment as she walks into a room to find that her sister has been shot, but we don’t gasp in surprise. We don’t say anything. I just continue crying silently, holding the phone tight in my hand, wanting desperately to feel closer to my mom.

When Ma calls the next morning, my heart stops.

“Have you heard from him?” I ask as soon as I pick up.

I’m prepared to hear that there still hasn’t been any news from Pa, that nothing has changed. But then she sighs. “I have.”