It seems like we are always waiting. For the money to apply for the waiver. To hear back about the waiver. And then, when we didn’t get it, for the rest of the bar to pass. And it seems like the whole time, or at least when they are talking to me, my parents are eternally hopeful. They always talk about the things we will do and how it will be when Mom gets back. Lately, it’s becoming harder and harder to feel like that day will ever actually come.

Even when I’ve thought it might be better to just pay someone to get her across the border, they refused to hear it, worried that getting caught trying to cross could set her case back even further. They have so much faith in the system.

“I know you want to be together now,” my mom says. “But it is much better for your father to keep his job. To save this money, to get a lawyer. I’ve looked it up, and people online say it’s like night and day, if you have a lawyer. If I have one, I could be living with your father by Christmas next year. We just have to be patient.”

My father is silent, sipping his beer and listening to her talk. I wonder if he believes as much as she does.

“I know you are frustrated, mijo—”

“We’ve been at this for years, Mom.” I interrupt her, in my frustration doing something I normally would never dream of.

“Yes, so we should be able to make it a few more months,” she says. “Plus it doesn’t seem so bad when you consider that I am only forty-two and I want to live until ninety, and do that in the US.”

“Supongo que sí.” I pick at my food.

“It’s not that much time, mijo. Lo prometo. I will be there soon.” She shakes her head, as if she can dismiss any worries just like that, and smiles warmly. “Now tell me, how is school?”

I tell her about the project and how well the meeting went with Thatcher Bell. I avoid talking about Sara. Complaining about not being with the girl I have a crush on seems petty, if not cruel, when talking to people who can’t be with the one they married because of me.

It seems so crazy that an invisible line, almost arbitrarily drawn, could have this power to separate people who love each other for years at a time. It doesn’t seem fair or just.