The house was blue.

It was always blue. In a small town in Minas Gerais, on a quiet street, the blue house waited.

Every year, in December, their mother painted it again. Same color. Same week. Nobody knew why.

Now their mother was dead.

Ana stood at the gate in her black dress. She was forty-four. She organized things. Papers, keys, problems. Today she organized a funeral.

Clara came late, by bus from São Paulo, with paint under her nails. She was thirty-eight. She organized nothing, ever.

The two sisters stood side by side at the cemetery. They did not touch. They did not talk.

Eight years. Eight years of silence between them.

Their mother, Teresa, went into the ground of Campo das Flores, the town of her whole life.

"We sell the house," Ana said, after. "One week. We clean it, we sell it, we go home."

"Fine," said Clara.

It was their longest conversation in eight years.