“Camila…”
I knew the voice immediately.
For a second, I wondered whether the rain, the shock or the pain in my cheek had made me imagine it.
Then the figure stepped beneath the porch light, and I saw her face.
Álvaro’s mother.
The woman we had been fighting about.
The woman he had just struck me over.
She stared at me standing barefoot in the rain, clutching a towel to my body with one hand and covering my cheek with the other.
Her expression changed from confusion to horror.
“Camila, what happened?”
I couldn’t answer.
She looked toward the closed front door, then back at me.
But I could tell from her face that the question had been unnecessary.
She had seen enough.
She had arrived without warning because she wanted to speak to us about the move.
She had been approaching the house when Álvaro’s voice became loud enough to hear from outside.
She had heard him tell me that I lived off him.
She had heard me say I was his wife, not his employee.
And before she could reach the door, she had seen him drag me across the threshold.
She had seen the strike.
She had seen everything he would later desperately wish nobody had witnessed.
She removed her coat and wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Come with me.”
I shook my head automatically.
“My clothes are inside.”
“So are your shoes.
So is your phone.
And none of that matters more than getting you somewhere safe.”
There was something startling about hearing those words from her.
Our relationship had never been easy.
She had criticized the way I kept the house, questioned why I had once cared so much about architecture, and made comments that left me feeling like I was merely occupying space in her son’s life.
Those were the reasons I had resisted her moving in.
I had expected her to defend Álvaro.
Instead, she looked at the door as though she no longer recognized the man behind it.
Then it opened.
Álvaro appeared in the doorway.
The anger was still on his face until he saw his mother standing beside me.
It disappeared almost instantly.
“Mom?”
She didn’t answer.
His eyes moved from her to me, then to the coat around my shoulders.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I came to talk about next week.”
Álvaro swallowed.
“How long have you been standing there?”
That was the first thing he wanted to know.
Not whether I was hurt.
Not whether I was freezing.
Not whether his mother was frightened by what she had witnessed.
He wanted to know how much she had seen.
His mother seemed to realize the same thing.
“Long enough.”
Álvaro stepped outside.
“It wasn’t what it looked like.”
I almost laughed.
The sentence was so predictable that it would have been absurd if my face had not still been burning.
