The bedroom door opened only a few inches.
Tomás stood in the hallway.
He didn’t switch on the light.
He didn’t speak.
He simply looked at Lucía, then at the small recorder she had pressed into my hand.
That was when I understood the tap against the door.
It had been a signal.
Lucía had known he was there.
Esteban sat up so suddenly the mattress jerked beneath us.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
His voice was too sharp for a man who had supposedly just awakened.
Tomás pushed the door wider.
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
For several seconds nobody moved.
Lucía was still holding my hand.
Her fingers were ice cold.
I looked at Esteban.
The face beside me was familiar—the same face I had kissed before turning off the lamp, the same man who had told me seventeen times to be patient with my frightened sister-in-law.
But his expression was different now.
He wasn’t confused.
He was calculating.
His eyes went first to Lucía.
Then to the recorder.
Then to Tomás.
“This is ridiculous,” he said.
Lucía finally released my hand.
“Play it,” she whispered.
Esteban swung his feet toward the floor.
“No.”
The word came too fast.
Tomás stepped into the room.
“Why not?”
“Because she’s been acting crazy since she got here,” Esteban said.
“You all know that.
Sleeping in our bed every night? Following us around? Crying all the time? Now she’s recording people?”
I stared at him.
It was the first time he had called Lucía crazy.
For seventeen nights, he had been the one defending her.
Let it go.
She’s family.
Being crowded is better than leaving her scared.
Now, with a recorder in my hand, his kindness vanished instantly.
Lucía pulled the blanket around herself and sat against the headboard.
“Please,” she said to me.
“Play it.”
My thumb found the button.
Esteban stood.
Tomás moved between him and the bed.
“Sit down.”
“Get out of my bedroom.”
“Not until she plays it.”
I pressed the button.
There was several seconds of muffled fabric and breathing.
Then I heard Esteban’s voice.
Quiet.
Close.
