At first, he assumed it was a housekeeper, someone hired to deal with the consequences of deferred maintenance, because what else would explain a woman kneeling on stone tiles, scrubbing with such intensity that her shoulders shook with effort, wearing faded sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, her hair pulled back carelessly as if vanity had long stopped mattering.
“Excuse me,” Victor called, his voice reflexively authoritative, the voice that moved markets and silenced boardrooms, “is my daughter home?”
The woman froze.
Her hand stopped mid-scrub, the brush hovering inches above the tile, and something about the stillness that followed made Victor’s chest tighten, because fear has a shape, and he recognized it instantly.
Slowly, she turned.
Victor forgot how to breathe.
The woman’s face was thinner than he remembered, sharper, drained of the softness that once made Elena look younger than her years, her eyes ringed with exhaustion so deep it seemed structural, not circumstantial, but beneath the fatigue, beneath the fear, he saw the unmistakable green he had memorized since infancy.
“Elena?” he whispered, the name catching painfully in his throat.
She stared at him as if seeing a ghost, her mouth parting slightly, her hands trembling so badly the brush clattered to the ground.
“Dad?” she said, her voice barely audible, a sound scraped raw by disuse.
