So you begin therapy.
At first because it’s offered. Then because you realize disgust doesn’t fade on its own. It festers. It turns into self-blame. Into endless review. Into quiet humiliations that can take root if left unnamed.
“I should have seen it,” you say in your second session.
Dr. Bell crosses one leg over
the other. “Seen what, exactly?”
“That he wasn’t who I thought.”
She tilts her head. “And if someone works very hard to appear safe, whose failure is it when he isn’t?”
You look down at your hands.
Because there is no answer that doesn’t place the blame in the wrong place.
Lucía starts therapy too.
At first, she resists. She says women from her village don’t sit in offices explaining fear to strangers with degrees. She says working is better than talking. She says she would rather scrub floors than
try to explain why the sound of a phone notification now makes her stomach drop. But Tomás, to his credit, doesn’t retreat into wounded pride or play the role of the rescuer. He goes with her to the first two sessions, waits in the reception area, and learns the quiet discipline of supporting without taking control.
When you visit them one Saturday in their small apartment, Lucía hugs you at the door.
