At first you think you are still dreaming. Teresa almost never leaves her room after nine, and at this hour the whole house should be sealed in silence except for the storm. But the voices are real. One is low and tense, unmistakably your husband’s. The other is thinner, strained, almost hoarse, and absolutely not Teresa’s.
You sit up so quickly the sheet twists around your legs.
For three years of marriage, you have learned to live with unanswered questions. Adrián never touched you like a husband. Never reached for you at night with hunger or even with shy uncertainty. He was kind, attentive, responsible, and endlessly careful with your feelings, but physically he moved around you as if intimacy were a border he could not cross. At first you called it nerves. Then trauma. Then stress. Then something you stopped naming because every label made you feel more foolish.
But this, a strange voice inside your mother-in-law’s bedroom at two in the morning, slices through all your practiced patience.
You slide out of bed and step into the dark hallway.
The house is large enough that sound travels oddly. The corridors amplify whispers and swallow footsteps. Lightning flashes through the tall front windows, painting the floor in pale silver for an instant, then plunging everything back into shadow. Teresa’s room is at the far end, always shut, always smelling faintly of lavender and medicine when she opens it. Tonight the door is not fully closed. A line of warm yellow light spills across the hall.
Your heart is beating much too hard.
You tell yourself there must be a simple explanation. Maybe a doctor. Maybe an old family friend. Maybe the television. But as you move closer, the words sharpen, and simple explanations begin dropping away one by one.
