My mother lifted her chin.
“We voted,” she said.
For a second, I heard nothing else.
Not the air conditioner. Not the faint traffic on the street outside. Not my own breathing.
“You what?”
“Your father, Lorena, and I discussed it,” she said. “We voted. You don’t get a voice in this anymore.”
I laughed once.
It was not humor. It was my body rejecting the sentence.
“You voted about my daughter?”
My father stepped forward. “This has been coming for a long time.”
“What has?”
My mother’s face did not change. “Renata is with Ivan’s family.”
The floor seemed to tilt under my shoes.
“With Ivan?”
“With his parents,” Lorena said quickly. “Don’t make it dramatic.”
“My daughter barely knows him.”
“He is still her father,” my father said.
“He is listed on a birth certificate,” I said. “That is not the same thing as being a father.”
Ivan had been in Renata’s life in the way a bad weather app is in your life: occasionally appearing, often inaccurate, rarely helpful. He came around when guilt or convenience moved him. He took photos, said things like, “My princess,” bought something bright and unnecessary, then disappeared for months. He had never asked for a parenting schedule. Never attended a parent-teacher conference. Never remembered the name of Renata’s pediatrician without being told. When she was five and had pneumonia, he sent a thumbs-up emoji after I told him we were at urgent care.
And my parents had sent her to his family while I was at work.
“What time?” I asked.
No one answered.
“What time did you send my child away?”
My mother pressed her lips together. “After breakfast.”
“You packed her bag?”
Lorena finally set the boxes down. “We made it easier. If we waited until you came home, you would have made a scene.”
My heart was beating so hard it felt like something trying to leave me.
“A scene.”
My mother sighed, as if I were the unreasonable one in a house where my daughter’s bedding was in a basket. “Patricia, you are never here. You work nights. You work doubles. You come home exhausted and then expect everyone else to tiptoe around your moods.”
“I work because the bills in this house do not pay themselves.”
My father’s jaw flexed.
He hated when I said true things in rooms he controlled.
“You cannot give Renata a stable home when you are always at the hospital,” he said. “We made the responsible decision.”
“The responsible decision was to send her to a man who does not answer his phone?”
“She is with her grandparents,” my mother said. “They have more time.”
I looked toward Renata’s room again. The ring light. The office photos. The empty wall.
“More time,” I repeated. “Is that why Lorena is clearing out her room?”
Lorena’s face flushed. “I need a workspace.”