So I changed the way I lived.
I handed my long-distance routes to my operations manager, Ernesto, and took on the local and regional work myself. I’m home every night now. The business makes a little less money. I’ve never once missed it.
I went to every parent-teacher meeting. Sofia’s grades climbed back up, slowly at first and then quickly. Her math teacher pulled me aside in the spring and said, “She’s back. The girl who used to argue with me about proofs is back.”
Some evenings Sofia just talked, about school, about friends, about nothing. I learned to put my phone face-down and let her finish every sentence. Some nights she talked about her mother, and we looked through old photos together. Some nights she was angry, at Patricia, at Elvira, and sometimes at me for not seeing it sooner. I let her be angry. She had earned it, and she needed to know that her anger wouldn’t make me leave.
