The strange stillness in the house during video calls, as if everything had been arranged five minutes before he appeared on screen.
He had called it discipline. Structure. Tension from parenting alone while he traveled.
Now those excuses lined up in his mind like people abandoning a room one by one.
“Move,” he repeated.
Lucía searched his face, perhaps looking for the version of him that would fold, the one who preferred keeping peace to confronting rot.
That man had existed.
Maybe until ten minutes ago.
Then Lucía laughed once, without humor. “So that’s it? She whispers something after bedtime, and suddenly I’m the villain?”
Sofia flinched at the tone. Only slightly. But Javier saw it. And once seen, it could never be unseen.
He opened the front door. Warm evening air moved into the hallway. Somewhere outside, a sprinkler clicked steadily over someone else’s grass. A car radio passed slowly, then faded.
