Ricardo wanted to believe him, but this time something in the ensuing silence didn’t resemble rest, but rather that artificial calm that remains when someone has just stopped crying.
He remained motionless for a few seconds,ucrm
staring at the ceiling, while Valeria closed her eyes again with an ease that seemed to him less human than rehearsed.
Then came the third scream, barely a broken thread, stifled, as if a hand had covered a mouth too late to extinguish it completely.
Ricardo sat down abruptly. He no longer thought about pipes, ducts, or the accumulated fatigue of weeks closing deals and smiling in front of greedy men.
He thought of Miguel at nine years old, before the accident, running around the garden with a red shirt and a ball glued to his foot.
He thought of Elena laughing from the terrace, with her hair up and a cup of coffee in her hand, as if life were something simple.
He also thought about the last few months, about the way Miguel avoided being alone with Valeria, about his thick silences, about his hands clenched on the chair.
She said nothing. She carefully pulled back the sheet, found her slippers, and walked toward the door without turning on the light.
Behind him, Valeria murmured his name once, almost lazily, like someone testing if they can still stop something without getting up.
Ricardo pretended not to hear her and went out into the hallway. The night air in the house was cold, almost damp, with that old smell of waxed stone.
The mansion stretched out in semi-darkness with an empty elegance: expensive paintings, antique mirrors, vases brought from Europe, all immaculate and completely useless at that moment.
Miguel was sleeping in the room at the far south end, near the small elevator that had been installed after the accident. Ricardo went there first.
She opened the door slowly, fearing to find the bed empty and, at the same time, hoping so, because an absence would at least confirm that she was not losing her mind.
The bed was occupied. Under the blanket, he made out the shape of a thin, motionless child’s body, its head tilted toward the window.
Ricardo released the breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He took two steps inside. Something stopped him.
It wasn’t Miguel sleeping there. It was a bundle made up of pillows, a rolled-up blanket, and the blue t-shirt of his school uniform.
Ricardo felt an icy emptiness in his stomach, an internal fall, like when an elevator gets stuck between floors and for a second the ground disappears.
He stepped back, closed the door quietly, and listened again. Now there were no shouts. Only a distant, uneven murmur beneath the house.
The basement was at the end of the kitchen, behind a door that was almost never used because the new wine cellar was on another level.
Ricardo couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone down to the old basement. Maybe when he moved out, maybe never since Valeria redecorated everything.
As he walked through the dining room, he noticed an absurd and decisive detail: a thin light under the service door, a yellow line trembling on the marble.
His heart began to beat so hard that for a moment he thought it would betray him before his own footsteps.
She took a small flashlight from the sideboard, the kind they used during power outages. She didn’t even know why; it was already light downstairs.
Perhaps he needed to hold onto something. Perhaps he needed the childlike illusion that an object could serve as a defense against what he was about to encounter.
When she reached the kitchen, she saw that the basement door was ajar. A sour smell, like chlorine mixed with medicine, wafted from inside.
He barely pushed the wood and heard a woman’s voice, low, quick, irritated, a voice he recognized immediately even though he had never heard it like that before.
You can’t keep doing this, Miguel. If you shout, you’ll only make things worse. We’re almost there. Breathe. Stay still. Please, cooperate.
Valeria.
Ricardo stepped down the first step as if he were entering someone else’s house. Each step creaked under his weight with an insulting clarity.
He stopped when he could see the top of the stairs. The old basement had been converted into a makeshift room.
There was a metal cot, a portable operating room lamp, boxes of medical supplies, a folding screen, and a table with syringes, gauze, and bottles.
Miguel lay on a narrow stretcher, his wrists restrained by cloth straps. His face was streaked with tears, and his breathing was ragged.
