shoebox

They migrated from the provinces when the judge retired. This was to escape the escalating violence in those places. He was very formal and never failed to speak. You always saw him impeccably dressed in his dark suits. His wife dressed nicely, too, and you thought she wouldn't be caught dead without her heels--sometimes high, sometimes medium, never low. I suspect she'd worked only inside the home. They'd brought up three children. He'd always provided them with nice houses and housemaids. As she was a racist, she'd never been able to forgive the child who married bi-racially nor fully accept the in-law. During the old white judge's last days and weeks, as his health failed further and further, she became exasperated and fed up with running here, running there despite paying a full-time nurse with money he'd earned(or stolen). Then he died and the running stopped acutely. Rest ensued. I think she'd planned to live with one of the children but it wasn't to be. So, she's with us still, but she doesn't live alone. She lives with a live-in housemaid by the grace of God. A judge's pension can be fairly comforting. Maybe in her thoughts or heart she lives alone. But who really knows?

It is, of course, the Colombian capital.