I’ve only ever seen our mother on her own. I know there was a time when it was different, but I can’t remember our parents together. Don’t know their faces in love. I didn’t witness them as a couple long enough to see them fight or start to hate each other like everyone else’s parents till they decide they’d rather love other people instead.

What were they like? Was it one of those couplings by circumstance, the fact of her pregnancy, or were they seriously knocked out the way everyone wants to be in love, the way you can only be when you’re young and just hope it lasts and doesn’t leak out of your hands or accidentally die by your touch like a newborn bird.

I only know our parents’ faces as they talk to each other through digital screens. Their weird politeness, like they’re business associates and didn’t once fuck enough to make three babies together. It’s always the same. Mom ends those calls looking disoriented and a little pained. Tell your father you love him, she mouths to us before we hang up. We love you, we say in English. Los adoro, he answers back.

I remember the time you asked our mom why she’s never had a boyfriend since our dad left our family in this country. Why do you even bother being faithful, you said, I guarantee he’s not living like some monk in Colombia.

It was clear your words burned. I thought she was going to tell you to stop talking like some rude gringa, one of those sitcom brats in dire need of a chancletazo, but she only sighed and said, You don’t know what you’re talking about, corazón.

I hope when Talia arrives she’ll tell us about our father. Our mom’s stories are limited to fifteen years ago and the bits she caught from her mother before she died about his life in Bogotá, and then what he reveals over the phone, which isn’t much. You say your single wish is to be able to vote in this country and made me swear to register as soon as I turn eighteen so I can cast ballots in every election since you and Mom can’t. But I know your even bigger wish is to have our dad in front of us, included in all our corny family photos. Learning his habits as well as we know our mother’s. How she stirs her coffee with her finger instead of a spoon so she can tell how hot the water is before it touches her tongue, she says, how the sight of rain makes her release a long, whistly breath, or how on chilly days she’ll always say it feels just like Bogotá. I guess what I’m trying to say is that having Talia return to us feels like a piece of our father is coming too.

You pointed across the river in the direction of Sleepy Hollow. You were talking about ghosts haunting that land, souls at unrest beneath the water, the dead buried in the mountain, sacrificed to history. I hadn’t heard you talk so much in a while, so I let you go on uninterrupted. In a couple of weeks, you’d graduate high school. Second in your class, though everyone knows you tied for first but the administrators had to decide which girl got to make the big speech at graduation and they picked the other one. You told Mom that in our town, with taxes so high the school may as well be prep, they couldn’t have a valedictorian who’s only planning to take a class or two at the local junior college when that other girl is on her way to the Ivy League. All year long there was talk of admissions tests, college tours. Seniors chose their schools by sports teams, family legacies, weather and lifestyle. Not you. You don’t get to be a part of that.