Serafina
Selling the house feels like peeling my own skin off.
Not blood, not bone—something worse. Identity. The notary slides the papers toward me with professional indifference, as if this is just another transaction and not a quiet execution. The pen is heavier than it should be. My name looks wrong on the line, like it’s being written by a woman who no longer exists.
I sign without crying.
Crying would mean admitting defeat.
“Congratulations,” the agent says automatically.
I don’t answer. I stand, smoothing my coat with hands that refuse to shake, and walk back through the house one last time while it still belongs to me.
Every room is loud with ghosts.
The hallway still remembers Leonel racing through it in socks, laughter ricocheting off the walls when he thought rules were optional and joy was endless. The kitchen smells faintly of mornings that never needed armor—Aurelia on the counter, swinging her legs while demanding pancakes shaped like animals I never learned how to make properly.
I pause at her bedroom door.
Tiny fingerprints still smear the glass. Stickers peel from the frame. This was where I once believed safety could be permanent. Where I dared to think untouchable meant protected.
I was wrong.
“Are we going now?” Leonel asks softly from behind me.
I turn. He’s standing too straight, backpack already on, trying to look older than he is. His hand slides into mine and grips too tightly, fingers locked like he’s afraid I might vanish if he loosens them.
“Soon,” I say.
Aurelia doesn’t bother with restraint.
She launches herself at me the moment she sees the suitcases by the door, arms wrapping around my neck, legs locking around my waist with a ferocity that steals my breath.
“No,” she says. Not crying yet. Furious. “You said this was our house.”
“It was,” I tell her, steady despite the fracture opening in my chest. “It still is. Just not the building.”
“That’s not how houses work,” she snaps.
I swallow hard. “I know.”
Leonel shifts closer, eyes flicking between us. “Did we do something wrong?” he asks quietly.
The question destroys me.
“No,” I say immediately, kneeling so we’re eye to eye. “Never. This isn’t because of you.”
“Then why are we leaving you?” Aurelia demands.
The words knock the air out of me.
“I’m not leaving you,” I insist. “I’m sending you somewhere safe.”
“Without you,” she says, voice cracking now.
“For now,” I answer. “Only for now.”
She shakes her head violently. “I don’t want ‘for now.’ I want you.”
I pull her close, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing her in like oxygen. “I know,” I whisper. “I want you too.”
Leonel steps forward, uncertain, and I open my arm without looking. He slides into the space, rigid and quiet.
“I don’t like this,” he says.
“I don’t either,” I admit.
The car arrives too soon.
Adrian waits at the curb, composed, watchful, already in the posture of protection. He doesn’t rush us. He gives me the courtesy of pretending I still have time.
Aurelia refuses to let go.
“I’ll hide,” she says suddenly. “I can be quiet.”
I smile despite the devastation tearing through me. “You’re terrible at quiet.”
“I can learn,” she insists.
Leonel tugs my sleeve. “Mama,” he says softly, “you promise you’ll come back?”
I crouch again, heart hammering so hard it hurts to speak.
“This isn’t forever,” I promise, voice shaking. “I will come back stronger. I swear it.”
Aurelia studies my face like she’s memorizing it for survival. Leonel nods slowly, choosing to believe because the alternative is unbearable.
“I’ll call every day,” I add.
“Every day,” Aurelia repeats fiercely. “No excuses.”
“No excuses.”
Adrian opens the car door gently. “We should go,” he says.
Aurelia screams when I step back—not words, just sound. Raw grief. Leonel bites his lip so hard it turns white.
I peel them off myself.
One arm at a time. Carefully. Like dismantling something living.
Adrian buckles them in, murmuring reassurance, steady hands doing what mine no longer can. Aurelia pounds the window once. Leonel watches me through the glass, eyes wide, unblinking.
I lift my hand.
They lift theirs.
The door closes.
The sound is final.
The car pulls away.
I stand there until it disappears, until the street dares to continue without them. Then I walk back into the empty house.
The silence is unbearable.
No footsteps. No laughter. No demands. Just hollow rooms and the echo of promises I pray I can keep.
I sink to the floor in the living room—the same spot where Aurelia once fell asleep on my chest, where Leonel once cried over scraped knees and broken toys.
My hands shake.
My breath fractures.
And only then—only when the door is closed and there is no one left to witness my unraveling—do I break.
The sound that leaves me is ugly. Uncontained. It tears out of me like something feral, grief clawing through my ribs until I curl inward, pressing my face to my knees, sobbing into the ghosts of a life I thought was safe.
Selling the house didn’t defeat me.
This moment nearly does.
But even as I collapse, one truth burns beneath the devastation:
I did this for them. And I will survive long enough to come back. Stronger. I have to.