My mother started shouting again, but for the first time in longer than I could remember, I wasn't the one who had to explain, defend, or apologize for anything.
I opened the side gate — not the main one, just enough for conversation, not for suitcases — and let Mr. Aguilar step out to stand beside me.
"Ernesto," he said simply, "it's good to see you. I was just telling your daughter it's been six years since I did that terrace work with you. Three days, if I remember right."
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
Rodrigo's parents, as it turned out, never did arrive the next day expecting a tour of a house my father built. Lorena quietly moved the engagement dinner to a restaurant in town instead, and whatever story had been planned for that visit was never told. My parents and most of the rest of the family drove back the same afternoon, though not before my mother told me, through the gate, that I had humiliated them in front of everyone.
I didn't argue with that either. I simply told her the truth was already standing in my dining room before they ever arrived — I had only decided, finally, not to hide it anymore.
The folder is still in a drawer in that house. I haven't needed to take it out since. But I keep it there anyway, because it reminds me of the one Friday I stopped explaining myself and let the paperwork, and the truth, do that for me instead.
