On the drive home, Sadie, who had been quiet the whole time, said to the window, "Mrs. A. Does my dad love me?"
I felt Abuela go still beside me. Gordo rumbled. A plow went past us in the other lane with its orange light going around.
"I don't know your dad very well, my love," Abuela said finally. "I know he's a man who doesn't do a lot of things he should do. I know that's about him, and not one thing about you. And I know your mother loves you so much she did something very wrong to try to make you feel loved. That's not good. But it's a lot of love. You should know that it's a lot of love, even when it's wrong."
Sadie didn't say anything. She held my hand tighter under the cuff.
That night Abuela slept on our couch, under the brown jacket, with her boots lined up on the floor beside her, toes even. My mother didn't come out of her room for dinner.
Later, when Sadie was asleep, I couldn't sleep, so I went out the front door and sat on the top step of the outside stairs in my new boots and my pajamas and my coat with the broken zipper, holding it closed with both hands. It had stopped snowing, and everything was very quiet, the way it only gets quiet after snow.
After a while the door opened behind me, and my mother came out, in her robe and her big slippers, and sat down on the step beside me. Not close. There was a space between us about the width of a shoe box.
We sat there for a long time.
"I like your boots," she said.
"Abuela picked."
"No she didn't. You did. She'd have picked black. The red stitching is you."