But Jeanette had returned. Carmen sat in an armchair, just outside the viewing room that contained Julio’s body. She’d tired of guests munching on crackers and standing around as if a dead body were nothing more than a prop, nothing more than a print on the wall or background music or a vase.

“I’m not leaving,” Jeanette said.

Carmen stood. She told Jeanette she’d disrespected her father’s memory.

“My father’s memory?” Jeanette laughed harshly.

“Do you know how lucky you are to even have had a father?”

At that, Jeanette had grabbed Carmen’s arm and stared at her, wild eyed. “That father is the reason for All. Of. This.” Jeanette motioned at herself.

“How dare you blame a man who—!”

“A man who—” Her face changed, turned serious. “A man who molested me?”

And Carmen felt the whole room shift, close in on them.

Her words should have been How? or When? or I believe you. Or nothing. Just her body, holding Jeanette’s close. Jeanette began to sob.

She remembered the feeling of hovering over the scene. Her daughter shuddering. The guests who walked past assuming Jeanette mourned her father. The flower vendors with the wreaths. That flower smell. Stale. The light bulb. The door. The heat, the heat, even in the overly air-conditioned room.

Her words should have been—any other words. But the real Carmen floated somewhere in the distance. And the body said, “It can’t be. It can’t be. Are you sure you—?”

But she absolutely knew it could be. How many nights had she woken to drunken Julio over her body? How many times had she fought him off and then given in, thinking, I’m married to him, isn’t this just duty? How the violation had strangled her, how she’d willed herself another life. She had thought herself a bad wife.

Carmen collapsed in the stale-flower-scented bathroom of the Rodríguez Funeral Home. She’d contemplated crawling into a casket herself. When she left the bathroom, Jeanette was gone.

The dishwasher began its cycle with a lurch of swishing water, the stop-and-start of the jets. Carmen could hear the inappropriate child, Lila, loudly answering questions in the dining room as the adults laughed.

“Maybe we should serve dessert,” she said.

Ha ha ha went the whole dining room. Someone smacked the table.

“Mom,” Jeanette said. “Asking me a few basic questions about what happened, one time, does not equal meaningful conversation. Do you know what it took for me to tell you?”

Carmen could smell the funeral home again—ugh, the flowers, she hated the flowers. Why? Why dwell, why talk, what good would it do? She had mastered a life without unearthing her own horror stories. She wished Jeanette could do the same. Her daughter needed strength, she needed Carmen’s strength for the both of them, she needed to learn the past haunted only if you let it.