You lower yourself onto the low wall across from her. The concrete still holds a trace of warmth from the day. “What happened after you moved in?”
Lucía inhales
slowly. “The first week was fine because everyone was around. Then one night I woke up and saw light under our bedroom door. I thought maybe your mother was unwell or Tomás had forgotten something. But when I opened it slightly, no one was there. Just the hallway.” She swallows. “The next night, I heard footsteps stop outside our room.”
Your hands tighten on your knees.
“The third night,” she says, “the doorknob moved.”
Neither of you speaks.
The wind stirs the laundry hanging on the far side of the
roof. Somewhere below, a dog begins barking at nothing. You think of the narrow hallway upstairs, of doors opening in the dark, of your own husband standing in the shadows outside a young woman’s room.
“I locked the door after that,” Lucía says. “The next morning, Esteban joked at breakfast that the old hinges in the house made strange noises and could make people imagine things.” She looks at you then. “I hadn’t told anyone what I heard.”
The night seems to tilt.
“He knew,” you whisper.
“Yes.”
Anger flares
so hot it makes you dizzy.
You want to reject it—to insist there must be some misunderstanding, that Esteban is strange but not predatory, awkward but not dangerous. But the details align too perfectly. The staged sleep. The careful light. The doorknob. The comments. The way Lucía chose proximity over distance, placing herself between you as if your presence were a shield.
