“It’s good.”
“Still on schedule?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He waited.
Actually waited.
I told him about a difficult vendor meeting.
He listened.
Afterward, I sat staring at my phone.
Hector noticed.
“What?”
“He asked about work.”
“That’s good.”
“I know.”
“So why do you look scared?”
Because I knew what hope cost.
I did not say that.
The engagement dinner slowly became real.
My mother booked a caterer.
White roses.
Cream linens.
A small quartet.
Dad ordered wine.
My grandmother Teresa called from Corpus Christi to ask what color dress she should wear.
“Whatever you want, Grandma.”
“No white.”
“Obviously.”
“No black either. People will think I’m mourning.”
“Beige?”
“I’m eighty-one, Jimena. If I wear beige, I’ll disappear into the wallpaper.”
I laughed until my eyes watered.
Hector’s parents, Javier and Elena Morales, reacted differently to the entire planning process.
They asked one question over and over.
“What do you two want?”
The simplicity of it sometimes made me emotional.
Hector’s sister Monica became our unofficial wedding coordinator.
She organized corporate events professionally and had the brutal honesty of someone who had watched too many people waste money on bad centerpieces.
She looked at one arrangement I saved online.
“No.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It looks like a baby shower from 1998.”
Hector laughed from across the room.
“Thank you, Monica.”
“You stay out of this.”
By the time we were six weeks from the engagement dinner, Monica and I were planning the actual wedding while Mom handled her event.
For once, the division worked.
I began going to my parents’ house on Saturday nights again.
Sometimes Hector joined me.
Mom asked how he proposed.
Then asked again the following weekend.
Dad asked about my career.
Berenice called from Dallas during one dinner and spoke to me for ten minutes without interrupting.
I started to think maybe adulthood had changed all of us.
Maybe the engagement had given my parents a reason to see me outside the old family roles.
Maybe I had spent so long expecting disappointment that I no longer knew how to recognize genuine effort.
Then, two weeks before the dinner, Mom called my office.
“Come over after work.”
“What happened?”
“It’s important.”
She would not explain.
I spent the rest of the afternoon imagining vendor disasters.
At five, I closed my laptop and drove north through rush-hour traffic.
By the time I reached Stone Oak, the sun was beginning to drop behind the subdivisions.
I knew something was wrong before I entered the living room.
Children were laughing.
Not neighborhood kids.
Santiago and Regina.
Berenice lived four hours away.
I walked toward the sound.
There she was.
Makeup smudged.
Hair pulled into a loose knot.
Tissue in her hand.
Mom sat beside her stroking her hair.
Dad sat across from them staring at the floor.
“What happened?”
Berenice started crying again.
“I left Armando.”
I set down my purse.
“What?”
“We’re separating.”
I sat slowly.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
“He broke the marriage.”
I did not ask for details.
It was not my business.
I asked whether the kids were okay.
She said they were confused.
I offered to take them for ice cream later if she needed quiet.
For several minutes, I thought that was why Mom had called me.
Then she cleared her throat.
“Jimena, there’s something else.”
I knew that tone immediately.
It was not a request.
It was an announcement.
She told me the engagement dinner was canceled.
Then admitted she had already canceled it.
The rest happened exactly the way painful family arguments always happened in our house.
Fast.
Then strangely slow.
Berenice accused me of caring more about a celebration than her pain.
Dad accused me of disrespecting Mom.
Mom told me I was being unfair.
I heard myself laugh once.