“You’re really cleaning the refrigerator now?”
Ana jumped.
She turned around and nearly dropped the cloth.
“Carlos?”
Her husband stood in the doorway, still wearing his work clothes.
She stared at the clock.
“Why are you home so early?”
Carlos smiled.
“I finished sooner than I expected.”
Ana slowly stood.
Something about his expression made her nervous.
Then he said the words she’d been hoping to avoid.
“Did you forget what we’re doing tomorrow?”
Ana’s face immediately changed.
“Tomorrow?”
Carlos raised an eyebrow.
“Yes. Tomorrow.”
She suddenly became very interested in the refrigerator.
“Oh.”
Carlos waited.
Ana sighed.
“Is it absolutely necessary that we go?”
Carlos folded his arms.
“Ana.”
“Maybe we could postpone it one more time?”
“No.”
“Just for a week?”
“No.”
“A few days?”
“Ana.”
She finally looked at him.
Carlos wasn’t angry.
That somehow made it worse.
“We’ve already postponed this visit three times,” he said. “We’re going tomorrow.”
Ana leaned against the counter.
“But your mother won’t mind.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she seems perfectly happy without us.”
Carlos stared at her.
“She’s my mother.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve been married to me for years.”
“I know that too.”
“Then how is it possible that you barely know her?”
Ana didn’t have an answer.
Because the truth was uncomfortable.
She had spent years avoiding the woman.
Carlos’s mother lived roughly two hundred kilometers away, in a small rural town surrounded by fields, orchards, and quiet roads.
That distance had become Ana’s shield.
Whenever Carlos suggested visiting, Ana somehow found a reason not to go.
A work deadline.
A headache.
A course she couldn’t miss.
A friend’s birthday.
A house project.
A cold.
There was always something.
And eventually, Carlos had begun to notice.
“You don’t want to meet her,” he said.
Ana looked offended.
“That’s not true.”
“Then what is it?”
Ana hesitated.
Fear.
That was the answer.
But she didn’t want to say it.
She had never met Carlos’s mother properly, and somehow that made her imagination much worse than reality.
Her married friends had filled her head with stories about difficult mothers-in-law.
Lucía’s mother-in-law had once arrived at her apartment without calling and spent an hour inspecting everything.
She had looked at the shelves.
The kitchen.
The bathroom.
Even the laundry.
She barely spoke, but her expression communicated everything.
A little dust here.
A sink that wasn’t empty there.
A towel folded incorrectly.
Lucía had told Ana that she felt as though she were being graded every time the woman visited.
Then there was Marta.
Marta’s mother-in-law was completely different.
She didn’t criticize the house.
She criticized everything else.
Especially how Marta raised her son.
