You answer in Lidia’s voice, low and apologetic, and the sound of it almost makes you sick. For ten years, your body learned discipline in a place where every door had rules and every emotion had to fit inside someone else’s paperwork. Now you are heading toward a house where rules belong to a drunk man, his cruel mother, and his sister, and your chest is so calm it frightens you more than anger ever did.
Anger is loud.
What you feel now is older, colder, more useful. The city slides past the window in gray June light, and you think of Lidia crying across the hospital table, her sleeves pulled down over bruises, her voice cracked around the name of a man who thought marriage meant private ownership. By the time the taxi turns onto her street, you are no longer thinking like someone who escaped.
You are thinking like someone who entered enemy ground.
The house is smaller than you imagined.
Lidia had described it over years in scraps, as if speaking too clearly might make it more real. A two-story place with chipped paint, a metal gate, a patch of weeds pretending to be a yard, and one broken porch tile that catches the toe of anyone not careful. You notice everything immediately because survival, for people like you, begins in details.
