Romina helped me see it, though she’d have said she just poured the coffee.

One night, late, after the girls were down, she asked me a question that took me apart.

She asked what I liked.

Not what I wanted for the children, not what would be good for the marriage, not what I thought Matthias needed — what I, Adela, liked.

And I sat at her kitchen table and could not answer.

I genuinely could not produce a single reliable thing.