The sentence is so absurd that it almost makes you laugh.
Instead you hear your own voice come out thin and unsteady. “Who is that.”
No one answers.
You look past him toward the chair. The stranger does not flinch. He just keeps looking at you with an expression that is not quite apology and not quite accusation. It is worse than either. It is the look of someone who has been waiting years for a door to open and now does not know whether freedom will save anyone at all.
“Who,” you repeat, louder now, “is that?”
Teresa closes her eyes as if she can escape what comes next by refusing to witness it.
The stranger answers first.
“I’m the man you were supposed to marry.”
The words hit like a physical blow.
You stare at him, then at Adrián, then back again. Thunder cracks overhead so violently it vibrates through the walls. Somewhere in the house, a glass rattles on a shelf. Your mouth is dry. Your skin is cold. If this is a dream, it has none of a dream’s softness. Everything is too precise. Too humiliatingly real.
