Nothing like the voice he used during the day.
“You can’t hide beside her forever.”
My stomach tightened.
Lucía’s recorded voice answered, barely audible.
“Leave me alone.”
Then Esteban again.
“Tell Tomás whatever you want.
Who do you think they’re going to believe? You? Or the man who’s lived in this family for years?”
The recording clicked off.
Nobody spoke.
I looked from the recorder to my husband.
He laughed once, but there was no humor in it.
“That’s it?”
Tomás’s jaw tightened.
“That’s enough.”
“Enough for what? You don’t even know what we were talking about.”
Lucía reached beneath the pillow again.
This time she pulled out her phone.
“There are more.”
Esteban’s face changed.
Not dramatically.
He didn’t shout or lunge.
He simply went still.
And that stillness frightened me more than anger would have.
Tomás turned toward his wife.
“How many?”
Lucía swallowed.
“Nine.”
My chest felt hollow.
Nine recordings.
Nine nights.
And I had spent those same nights resenting her for being in my bed.
Tomás sat on the edge of the chair near the window as if his legs had suddenly stopped working.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Lucía looked at him, and the shame in her expression made his face collapse.
“I tried.”
“When?”
“The third day we were here.”
Tomás stared at her.
She reminded him quietly.
She had told him she felt uncomfortable around Esteban.
Tomás had assumed she meant the usual awkwardness of moving into another family’s home.
He had told her Esteban could be sarcastic but was harmless.
Lucía had stopped trying to explain.
Later that week, she said, Esteban cornered her alone in the kitchen after everyone else had gone upstairs.
He didn’t touch her.
That detail mattered to Lucía because Esteban would use it repeatedly.
I never touched you.
As if fear required bruises to be real.
He stood too close, blocked the doorway, and told her that she needed to be “friendlier” if she wanted to fit into the family.
When she moved around him, he laughed.
That night she slept beside Tomás with the bedroom door locked.
The next morning Esteban found her alone near the laundry room.
“Locks don’t make you safe in somebody else’s house,” he told her.
Lucía had no recording of that first threat.
She had only her memory.
