Legend had it that when they first met, Emilio had all the locks changed on her third floor Bronx apartment door. And once, when Sajel had tried to leave him, Emilio had followed her halfway across the country with a handgun and threatened to turn her over to ICE.

         But all that was so much water under the bridge; they’d been married thirty years now. Her husband was still the one who expressed strong opinions and made a show of bossing her around in front of guests, but over the years, the truth concerning the balance of power in their marriage had begun to show through. Sajel had progressed from social worker to regional manager to Chief Administrator at a center that distributed food, medicine and childhood vaccinations to nearly 10,000 people in the Chicago area.

         So Emilio had became a house-husband: a tender of roses, a caretaker of in-laws, the one who dropped off and picked up Jamie at everything from school to church to music lessons and jujitsu. Over the years, he also became increasingly devoted to his dog.