Chapter 5 - A New Season in Lomas
Two weeks had passed since the wedding in San Ángel.
The media storm had slowly drifted away, replaced by newer scandals and fresher gossip among the wealthy elite of Polanco and Lomas. In a city as large and fast-moving as Mexico City, yesterday’s tragedy was simply today’s background noise.
In our home, however, something remarkable had taken place.
The heavy, defensive chill that had settled into our walls during the months of Mercedes’s declining health and silent suffering seemed to have lifted entirely. With the parasites cut away from our lives, the air inside the house felt clean again.
On a bright Saturday morning, Mercedes sat in her favorite wrought-iron chair in the central courtyard, a woolen shawl draped lightly over her shoulders. She was holding a small ceramic cup of green tea, her eyes fixed on a pair of hummingbirds darting between the pink blossoms of the bougainvillea.
I walked out from the study carrying a small leather case and a sketchbook she hadn't touched in over five years—not since the cancer treatments had drained her energy and stolen her joy.
I placed the sketchbook and a box of charcoal pencils gently on the glass table before her.
Mercedes looked down at the pencils, her thin fingers tracing the worn leather edge of the cover. A gentle, quiet smile touched her lips—a real smile, reaching all the way to her eyes, untouched by bitterness or sorrow.
“I haven't drawn in years, Arturo,” she murmured, looking up at me with those deep, expressive eyes that had loved me through poverty, wealth, and everything in between.
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“You have all the time in the world now, my love,” I said, pulling up a chair and sitting beside her, taking her warm hand in mine. “The house is quiet. The accounts are settled. And the only people in our lives are the ones who truly know how to love us.”
Mercedes squeezed my fingers tightly. A soft breeze swept through the courtyard, carrying the scent of damp earth and blooming jasmine. She opened the sketchbook to a blank page, picked up a charcoal pencil, and began to draw the sweeping lines of the jacaranda tree against the clear blue sky.
