Last night Sofia supervised toothbrushing and as she leaned against the bathroom doorway and watched Julia watch herself in the mirror she realized, perhaps for the first time, how much she had missed. The nighttime rituals, the place Julia hangs her bathrobe. Which elbow she likes her bear tucked in when—usually Saul, sometimes Rosa—smooths the covers over her before she goes to sleep. And even though Saul was in trouble and Joey was keeping secrets from her and Paolo—Paolo jumped into her head, an apparition—Paolo never showed at dinner, did he, and Antonia must be frantic—Sofia found herself laughing with her daughter. Tucking Julia’s hair behind her ears and pressing a palm to her forehead.

When she left Julia, Sofia couldn’t sleep. She lay in her clothes on the bed and accepted that she would feel the whole night pass her by. Her anger became white-hot. She blamed Saul for stealing her sleep and her youth. She did this with her whole self. She scanned the room for something to destroy. There was a glass of water on Saul’s nightstand. She wanted to stomp on it. She wanted to slam it on the ground. She wanted to throw it against the wall. But Julia was just in the next room. Sofia opened her nightstand drawer to look at the gun there. What use is a gun? What use can a small body of steel and stone possibly be against the tides of time, the suffocating maw of tradition, the withholding of information? Sofia slammed the drawer shut. She climbed back in bed with a raging heart.

She didn’t sleep. But sometime in the middle of the night Sofia woke with the thick air pressing down. She eased herself out of bed and tiptoed into the living room to sit at Saul’s desk. How things have changed, she thought. How young she was, when she first did this, sneaking away from baby Julia and Saul to imagine what it would be like to live for herself. How much she has learned since then.

Sofia sat up straighter. Yes: how much she has learned. She is not the idealistic newlywed, not the untried new mother. She is no one to push around.