Chapter 21: A Partner's Pen

Inés's POV

The Zapopan house opened on the last Friday of June, and the client cried at the staircase.

I watched Rodrigo accept it with his hands behind his back, the way he did when he didn't trust himself to be gracious.

The client wanted to know who had drawn the handrail.

"My partner," he said, and nodded at me.

We were not partners yet.

He had asked me to wait until the house was finished, and I had said yes, and I had waited, which was not easy for me.

Since the spring he had slept in my bed above the studio, after the sofa.

He had never once mentioned the house on the hill.

He drove to Valeria's every second Tuesday.

He came home with scan pictures and a list in his hand, and I learned the names of baby things the way I'd once learned load tables.

Nobody could say he had not kept his terms.

That evening, we locked the Zapopan site for the last time, and drove back to the studio with the windows down.

The two young architects were waiting at the big table with a bottle of cheap sparkling wine and four mismatched glasses.

Emilio stood at the end, looking rumpled and pleased, with his briefcase open.

"I'm only here to witness," he said. "Strictly as a friend. I am not billing anyone."

"You're billing me," I said.

"I'm billing you in wine."

The contract lay on the scarred table, and my own signature was already at the bottom of it, dated five years old.

Rodrigo picked up the pen.

I had imagined this moment more times than I could count, and I had always imagined that I would be calm.

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