It's the first English I've heard out of her.
I come in slowly and sit down against the opposite wall, as far from her as the room allows, and I put both hands flat on my knees where she can see them.
"You're the one from the porch," she says.
I look over at Mila.
"I told her." Mila shifts her weight so Yoli's hand stays where it is. "About the photograph. About the dog. She wanted to know why a bunch of strangers came for her, and the answer turned out to be a long story, so I told her the long story."
Lucia turns the plate around in her hands.
"She talked about you." She says it to me, careful, a word at a time, like she's rationing them. "In there. Not by name. Just a boy who left."
"Lucia—"
"She used to say she wasn't angry anymore. Through the wall." Her thumb runs the rim of the plate. "She said it like it was true. I never believed her."
"It wasn't true," Mila says.
"No." Lucia almost smiles. "It wasn't."
Then she looks at Mila, and her whole face changes, and her chin starts going.
"I have to tell you something." She switches to Spanish, because English won't carry it. "That night. When you knocked."
Mila goes very still.
"I heard you say it. Volveré." Lucia's got both hands wrapped around that plate like it's the only thing keeping her on the earth. "And I said it back to myself for a long time after. Every night. Volverá. Volverá. Like a prayer, except I never prayed, so it was only a thing I said."
Mila reaches over and puts a hand on her foot. Not her hand. Her foot, over the sock, where it's safe.
"Then the summer came, and they took Elena up the stairs, and they brought a child down and put her in Elena's room."Lucia's crying and she doesn't wipe at it. "And I stopped saying it."
"Lucia."
"I hoped you were coming back." She looks straight at her. "I need you to know I hoped. But I was afraid. I was so afraid you weren't, and after a while being afraid was easier than hoping, so I let go of it."
Mila doesn't move.
"I let go of you." Lucia's voice cracks down the middle. "And then somebody knocked twice on my door and I almost didn't answer, because I thought I was dreaming it. And it was you. It was you the whole time, and I'd stopped believing."
Mila doesn't tell her it's all right.
That's what I'll remember about my woman for as long as I'm breathing. She doesn't reach for the easy one.
"You should have stopped believing," Mila says. "Two years is too long to ask anybody to hope. I'd have stopped."
"You didn't."
"I was outside." Mila's voice doesn't waver. "It's easy to keep a promise in a warm bed. You had to keep hope in a room. You had the harder one, and I'm never going to let you feel bad about it."
Lucia sets the plate down on the floor.
Then she crawls across that bedroom on her hands and knees and puts her head in Mila's lap.
Mila puts a hand on her shorn hair, and neither one of them says anything else for a long while.
I get up without a sound and leave them to it.
