I didn’t bother checking my phone. I already knew what it was. My bank confirming that the $300 transfer had gone through successfully.Or more accurately, the mother of the woman who had once been my entire universe… and my deepest wound.It had been five years, three months, and two days since Marina disappeared from my life. I never liked calling it her “death,” even though logic insisted otherwise. To me, she hadn’t died. She had vanished—leaving behind an empty side of the bed and a silence so loud it echoed through every room of the house we had built with so much hope.

They said it was a car accident. Marina had been traveling to visit her family in a coastal village six hours away. The police report was brief. The coffin arrived sealed, supposedly because the impact had been too severe. The funeral passed like a fog—faces blurred by grief, arms wrapping around me while I felt absolutely nothing.The clearest memory I had from that day was Doña Clara—small, fragile, shaking—clinging to me as though I were the last thing keeping her upright.In the middle of all that shared devastation, I made a promise.Marina had always worried about her mother. A widow. A small pension. Failing health.“If anything ever happens to me,” she once said half-jokingly, “please don’t let her struggle.”Standing by the grave, the dirt still fresh, I swore to Doña Clara that she never would.“I’ll take care of you,” I told her, my own hands trembling as I wiped her tears. “Every month. For food, for medicine. It’s what Marina would have wanted.”