““No. I’m not asking if you will move back in with Mama. I just want to understand why it doesn’t work.” “Have you asked your mother this same question?” “No.” “Would you?” She imagined this scenario. Antonia, angry, and Beatriz, merely puzzled, both of these expressions feeding the other. It was exactly the kind of conversation that Beatriz spent much time avoiding. “No.” “That is why it doesn’t work,” he said. Beatriz took this information and put it into a projected future. In this projected future, she could not tell if she broke Pete Wyatt’s heart merely by being herself. She could not tell if they would be unable to have conversations because they would both want something from the other that was impossible. She could not tell if it was safer to stop a love story before it ever truly got under way.””
