Your mother cried first.
Not from sentiment. From overwhelm.
Your father stared at Celia for a long time, then looked at you and asked the simplest question in the room.
“Do you still love her?”
You opened your mouth.
Then closed it.
Because the answer was not simple anymore.
Love had been easy before truth.
Now it was mixed with distrust, pity, anger, admiration, sorrow, and that terrible adult knowledge that a person can both wound you and still be the one your soul keeps turning toward.
“Yes,” you said finally. “But it hurts differently now.”
Your father nodded once.
That was more understanding than you expected.
He did not bless the marriage. He did not embrace Celia. But he stopped talking about enchantment and manipulation. In poor communities, danger is easier to respect than eccentric romance. Once he understood you had walked into something bigger than greed, his contempt quieted into wary concern.
Months passed.
You learned.
Not just about her world, but about her.
The dead son’s name was Mateo.
That rocked you in ways you had to keep private, because hearing her speak it for the first time made something inside both of you go silent. He had loved engines, hated school, and laughed with his whole body. He died before she learned how to save him, before she learned anything, really, except that grief can become a second skeleton inside a woman if she lets it.
You asked once whether loving you had felt like betrayal to his memory.
Celia looked stunned by the question.
“No,” she said. “It felt like being asked whether I was still allowed to be human.”
