Not because there is any shame in a chair — there is none — but because Emiliano had spent a week telling this exact room that I was a body without a mind, a legacy to be honored rather than a woman to be reckoned with, and I needed them to see, with their own eyes, the lie of it.

I needed them to watch the furniture stand up.

So I locked my knees and I found Emiliano’s face across the garden and I used it the way a climber uses a fixed point, and I rose, and I did not let them see how close I came, the whole time, to falling.

That was the last performance I ever gave for that family’s benefit — and it was, for once, entirely for mine.

Chapter 20 — The Screen

Andres took control of the main screen, and the image of the fake foundation vanished.