“Patricia,” she said, her voice already guarded.
“Is Renata with you?”
A pause.
“She is safe.”
I closed my eyes for one second. “I’m coming to get her.”
“No,” Irma said. “She is staying here for now.”
My grip tightened around the steering wheel. “What do you mean, no?”
“Your family brought her. They said you agreed she should spend time with Iván’s side for a while. They said you were overwhelmed.”
“I never agreed.”
“That is what you say now.”
“Put Renata on the phone.”
“No.”
“Irma.”
“I am not sending that child back and forth like a bag because the adults cannot get their story straight.”
The line went quiet.
I looked through the windshield at my parents’ house, the big beige brick front, the trimmed hedges, the door I had paid to keep from being lost.
“I am on my way,” I said. “And I am bringing proof that I did not send her.”
Irma hung up.
Her house was in Garland, almost forty minutes away with midday traffic. Every red light felt personal. I sat behind SUVs, delivery vans, a school bus turning slowly at an intersection, while my mind filled with images I could not control. Renata in a strange kitchen. Renata asking when I was coming. Renata believing whatever my mother had said because children trust adults before they learn how many ways adults can bend the truth.
By the time I reached Irma’s street, my hands were cold.
Her house was a modest single-story with potted plants by the door and a wind chime shaped like blue glass birds. She opened only halfway, placing her body in the entrance.
I was still in scrubs. I knew how I looked: exhausted, pale, hair loose at the edges, eyes too sharp from fear. Irma looked me over and did not soften.
“Where is my daughter?” I asked.
“She is inside.”
“I need to see her.”
“You are not taking her just because you showed up angry.”
“Irma,” I said, forcing every word to stay controlled, “my parents moved my child without my consent while I was working. Iván is not answering. I called him three times.”
That reached something.
Not much.
Enough.
I took out my phone and showed her the call log. Iván. Iván. Iván. Then her number. Then the time stamps.
“If I had agreed to this,” I said, “why would I be searching for her like this?”
Irma glanced at the screen.
Behind her, her husband Armando appeared in the hallway. He was a quiet man, broad-shouldered, serious, not warm to me but never careless with words. He looked at the call log longer than Irma did.
“She came crying,” he said.
Irma turned toward him, annoyed. “Armando.”
“She did,” he said. “And if Patricia did not know, then something is wrong.”