You kneel before she can see the hesitation in your face.
The first thing that hits you is how carefully she studies you. Not just a child greeting her mother, but a small person taking inventory of tone, smell, mood, danger. When she wraps her arms around your neck, you understand with sudden fury that a three-year-old should never hug like someone checking whether today is safe.
“Yes, baby,” you whisper.
She pulls back and frowns.
“You sound weird.”
You almost smile.
Children are ruthless little witnesses, and honesty lives in them long before politeness. You smooth her hair and tell her your throat hurts, that the hospital air felt strange and dry, and she accepts it because she is three and because children in violent homes learn to accept incomplete answers if they sound gentle enough.
From the hallway, a woman’s voice cuts in sharp as broken glass.
“Are you planning to stand outside all day?”
That will be Teresa, Damián’s mother.
She sits at the dining table wearing a housedress, red lipstick, and the expression of someone personally offended by the existence of other women. Beside her is Damián’s sister, Verónica, scrolling through her phone with the lazy cruelty of people who outsource the dirtiest work to the strongest bully in the room and then enjoy the leftovers.
Teresa looks you up and down.
“So,” she says, “His Majesty the madonna returns.” She means the hospital visit, not with concern, but with accusation. As if Lidia taking one afternoon to see her twin was a luxury stolen from more deserving people.
You lower your eyes the way Lidia would.
That costs you something. Everything in you wants to look directly at her until she remembers every ugly word she ever used against your sister and hears it back in the shape of your silence. But not yet. Monsters grow careless when they believe they are still looking at prey.
“Sofi needs dinner,” you say softly.
Teresa snorts.
“Then cook.”
The kitchen is a narrow corridor pretending to be a room.
A dented refrigerator, one sticky window, a sink with chipped enamel, and an old stove with only three reliable burners. You open the cabinets and feel rage rise like heat under a closed lid. Barely any food. Pasta, oil, stale crackers, rice. In the corner, hidden behind tea tins, you find two fruit cups and a packet of animal crackers wrapped carefully in a dish towel.
Lidia’s stash for Sofi.
