He hadn’t moved anything in the house. Their bed was still unmade — it had been like that for days, he said, since the last night they slept in it. Her shoes, tossed near the front door. On the small dining table were further scattered bits of her presence: the leaves of her morning mate, a stack of her unopened letters.

In the kitchen, their dishes still sat untouched in the sink. He said he couldn’t bring himself to wash the ones they had used to eat breakfast before they left the house that last morning.

“We didn’t know this was the last time she was going to come back,” he told El Tecolote .

For the past weeks, Roberto has been sleeping on a friend’s couch, too distraught to spend the night alone in his house.

This July, Roberto’s wife Sandra was arrested by Immigration and Custo

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