Esteban’s eyes opened in the darkness.
Lucía still had one hand wrapped around his wrist and the other locked around mine beneath the blanket.
Nobody spoke.
From the hallway came another quiet tap.
Esteban looked toward the bedroom door.
That tiny movement told me more than any confession could have.
He knew what the tap meant.
Lucía leaned closer to me without taking her eyes off him.
“Don’t move yet,” she whispered.
Esteban’s expression changed instantly.
The sleepy confusion disappeared.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
His voice was low, controlled, almost offended.
Lucía released his wrist but stayed between us.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
Esteban sat up.
“So now I’m not allowed to move in my own bed?”
I felt ridiculous for a fraction of a second.
That was his gift.
He could take something terrifying and, with one sentence, make everyone else feel foolish for noticing it.
Then I heard the drawer beside him finish sliding shut.
My bedside drawer.
The one Esteban had reached across to open.
I looked at Lucía.
She gave the smallest nod.
“Tomás,” she called.
The bedroom door opened immediately.
My brother was standing in the hallway, fully dressed, his face tense.
The light behind him explained the thin bright line I had seen under the door.
Esteban stared at him.
“What is this?”
Tomás stepped inside.
“A witness.”
Esteban laughed once.
It was a dry, ugly sound.
“A witness to what? Me reaching across my wife in bed?”
“No,” Lucía said.
“A witness to you doing exactly what I told him you would do.”
I sat up slowly.
My hand was still trembling.
“Somebody needs to tell me what’s happening.”
Lucía finally turned toward me.
The fear I had seen on her face for more than two weeks was still there, but now something else stood beside it.
Relief.
“The first night Tomás and I slept here,” she said, “I couldn’t sleep.”
Esteban’s jaw tightened.
“Lucía.”
She ignored him.
“I came downstairs because I wanted water.
When I passed this room, the door was partly open.”
I looked at Esteban.
He said nothing.
Lucía continued.
“You were asleep.
He wasn’t.”
My stomach dropped.
