Up on the roof, the night air hits us sharp and cool. Puebla stretches out endlessly around us in beautiful, oblivious fragments of yellow streetlights and shadowed concrete terraces.
Lucía places her pillow gently on an overturned, paint-splattered bucket and sits down.
I refuse to sit. I stay standing, my arms crossed so tightly my fingers dig into my own ribs. “Talk.”
She nods slowly, looking down at her bare feet. “It started long before we moved in here,” she says, her voice fragile but clear.
I remain perfectly silent.
“At first, I really thought it was just in my head. Tomás worked those late night shifts, and sometimes Esteban would stop by our old apartment. He was always so helpful. Always so excessively polite.” Her mouth tightens into a bitter line. “Then, one hot afternoon, he stood just a little too close to me in the kitchen. He brushed his body against mine when there was absolutely no need for it. After that came the quiet comments. Small, insidious ones. About the smell of my hair. The shape of my mouth. Exactly the kind of poisonous things a supposedly decent man can always claim were harmless compliments if a woman ever dares to repeat them.”
My skin feels far too tight for my skeleton. “And you didn’t tell Tomás?”
Lucía shuts her eyes tightly. “No. Because if I articulated it wrong, I would instantly be branded the crazy, jealous woman who poisoned the perfect family. Because men exactly like him build their entire lives relying on our hesitation.”
I slowly lower myself onto the low concrete wall across from her. “What happened after you and Tomás moved into this house?”
“The first week was fine. Then, one night, Tomás was on the night shift. I woke up at 2 a.m. and saw a bright light shining under our bedroom door. When I cracked the door open slightly, the hallway was completely empty.” She swallows hard. “The very next night, I heard heavy footsteps stop directly outside our room. And stay there.”
My hands close into fists on my knees.
“The third night,” she whispers, “the doorknob slowly turned. I locked the door every night after that. The next morning at breakfast, Esteban smiled and casually joked that the old iron hinges in this house made strange settling noises and could easily make paranoid people imagine things. He knew.”
The entire night seems to violently tilt on its axis.
“Why sleep between us?” I ask, though the vile answer is already blooming in my mind.
Lucía’s eyes completely fill with tears. “Because he won’t dare try anything with you lying right there. I thought… I thought if I made myself completely impossible to reach without exposing himself to you, he would eventually give up.”
Pure, acidic nausea rolls aggressively through my stomach. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
