“And if she refuses,” Teresa says, “it’ll be an accident.”
You don’t breathe. You don’t blink. Your body goes cold in one clean sweep, as if someone opened a freezer door inside your ribs.
A chair scrapes. A footstep turns in your direction. Your heel touches the floor by mistake and the sound pops like a gunshot in the quiet.
“Who’s there?” Álvaro calls, suddenly sharp.
You do the only thing you can do when you realize you are living inside someone else’s plan. You move before fear can turn you into furniture, and you step forward with your smile still assembled, still pretty, still useful. You walk into the kitchen with the same face you wore in the taxi, the same face you wore in the notary’s office, the face of a woman who thinks she is safe.
“Hey,” you say, bright. “I’m home.”
Teresa’s eyes flick to your bag so fast it’s almost a reflex. Álvaro’s expression resets into something affectionate, but it’s too smooth, too immediate, like a mask dropped into place. He comes toward you and kisses your cheek with performative warmth, and you hate how familiar his mouth feels against your skin. Teresa gives you that practiced look of surprise, the one you imagined in the taxi, except now it looks like a coin with the wrong face.
“How did it go?” Álvaro asks.
You lift the bag slightly, like you’re lifting a gift. “Abuela Carmen… she left me two apartments and a summer house.”
Teresa’s mouth makes a tiny shape that might be a smile if you didn’t know what hunger looks like. Álvaro’s eyes brighten, but not with pride, not with happiness for you. It’s the shine of someone calculating distance, timing, and paperwork.
“That’s incredible,” he says, and squeezes your hand a little too hard. “We should handle the legal stuff quickly so nothing gets messy.”
Teresa nods immediately. “Exactly. You don’t want the government sniffing around. Taxes. Complications.”
You let your shoulders relax just enough to sell the lie. You even laugh softly, as if the word “taxes” makes you nervous the way they think it does. You can feel your heart beating against your ribs like it’s trying to escape through your throat.
“Yeah,” you say. “We’ll do it right.”
Álvaro reaches for your bag, but you shift it behind your hip with a movement that looks like absent-mindedness. You tell yourself you’re not paranoid. You’re awake. There’s a difference, and tonight it matters.
Teresa starts making coffee, busying her hands, trying to look like a mother-in-law who just wants to help. Álvaro keeps talking in that soothing voice he uses when he wants you to stop asking questions. He mentions “a power of attorney,” says it like it’s a normal grown-up thing married couples do, like it’s as harmless as adding him to your Netflix account.
“Just so I can run errands for you,” he says. “It’s easier.”
You tilt your head. “Which errands?”
His smile tightens for half a second. “Notary errands. Registration. Bank stuff. All the boring parts.”
Teresa sets a mug down with a gentle clink that sounds like punctuation. “It’s for your own good, Lucía. Your grandma would want you protected.”
Your grandma would want you alive, you think, but you don’t say it. You’re still playing the role of the woman they think they can manage. You nod like you’re convinced, and you watch them relax by degrees, like predators who believe the net is already around the prey.
Then Teresa slips. It’s small, almost nothing, but you catch it because your entire body has turned into a listening device.
“We don’t have much time,” she says, as if she’s talking to Álvaro more than to you.
Álvaro’s eyes flash toward her, warning. Teresa recovers instantly. “I mean… deadlines. Deadlines for paperwork.”
You keep smiling. You keep nodding. You memorize everything.
That night, you lie beside Álvaro and you don’t sleep. He snores softly, the way he always has, and it feels obscene that someone can rest so easily while planning someone else’s “accident.” You stare at the ceiling and build a new version of yourself, piece by piece, like armor.
