“Doña Victoria won’t let him,” I said, setting the finished letter on the stone table.

“She can’t resist a chance to show off her superiority in front of thirty-two witnesses.”

I took the second envelope from the stack and smoothed its edge with my thumb.

“How many days until the quarterly lease review?” I asked.

“Sixteen days,” Samuel said.

“Exactly four days after Easter Sunday.”

I picked up the brass seal again, feeling the steady weight of the metal in my hand, and pressed the Varela crest into the soft red wax.

I set my single canvas bag on the terrazzo floor beside my bench in the fourth-floor corridor of the family court building in Guadalajara.