The other looks from Mauricio to you and understands immediately. If you can speak, command, react coherently in real time, then the guardianship petition they came to stage this morning looks very different. No longer responsible family intervention.
Now it looks like theft arriving too early.
“Perhaps,” the older lawyer says cautiously, “this is not the right moment—”
“No,” you say. “It is.”
The words come easier now, though each one still hurts. You force yourself to breathe. You have already spent two years letting anger turn your house into a prison. You will not waste the first honest moment by being less precise than the man trying to dismantle your life.
“You bring lawyers into my office,” you say to Mauricio. “You grab a child. You shove her mother. You call security on them in my house.” Your eyes stay locked on his. “You are finished here.”
He laughs again, thinner this time. “With respect, Tío, you are not well. We came because everyone is worried about your condition.”
From the floor, Carmen makes a disbelieving sound.