No complaints.
No tears.
Just the clothes I was wearing and a small bag.
I lowered my head in a final goodbye.
“I’m leaving.”
No one answered.
I turned and walked toward the exit.
Just as I put my hand on the bolt of the iron gate…
A deep, husky voice sounded behind me.
“Maria.”
I stopped immediately.
It was my father-in-law, Don Ernesto.
In the five years I was his daughter-in-law, he was almost always the quietest man in that house.
He spoke little.
He rarely intervened.
Most of the time he sat in his wooden chair on the patio, reading the newspaper or tending to his succulent plants.
I often wondered if he was truly aware of what went on inside that house.
I turned around.
He was standing by the trash can on the terrace, holding a black plastic bag.
He looked at me for a moment and then said slowly:
“Since you’re leaving… take this bag and throw it in the bin on the corner for me, okay?”
He lifted the bag.
“It’s just trash.”
That surprised me a little.
But I nodded anyway.
“Sure.”
I walked over and took the bag.
It was extremely light.
So light it seemed almost empty.
I bowed my head again in farewell.
He didn’t say anything else.
He just nodded slightly.
I turned around and kept walking.
The iron gate slammed shut behind me.
That sound felt like an ending.
I walked down the small cobblestone street.
On both sides were colorful houses, so typical of old neighborhoods… although now, in my new life, everything seemed different, as if I were in some quiet corner of Mexico, where the streets also hold stories in every stone.
A dog was sleeping in the shade of a tree.
In the distance, I could hear music coming from a bar on the corner.
