Yolanda prayed to the Virgin Mary because of their bond of motherhood, though she’d never suffered the groping and plunging of Javier and Juan, nor the sweet touch of Carlos.
There was a meteor shower one night. Yolanda had awakened and though she did not know the hour, she later believed that it was the time between midnight and two that Carlos had died a year before.
She went outside and walked a distance from the house to relieve herself. As she squatted and waited, she looked up to see the stars dying in bursts across the sky.
She watched for a while and decided it was a sign that she was forgiven.
From her gruff abuelo through her father and brothers and husbands and sons to even the Padre or Mary's own Son, if there was any man Yolanda had trusted, it had been Carlos.
It was all right with her grandfather, he had told her it was. But Yolanda wasn't sure about what she did with her brother.
Then Carlos had broken her heart with his fist, leaving it like clay shards of a flowerpot, no longer capable of holding the soil in which to grow love.