After the Slap, Every Door in the Alcázar Mansion Began to Lock

“Javier asked me for help three days before he died.”

Mariana forgot the pain in her face.

“He asked you for what?”

“A way out.”

“Out of what?”

“The company. His mother. Certain agreements he had made.”

Her voice dropped. “What agreements?”

“He did not tell me everything.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“No.”

He picked up his watch again, though he did not put it on. The gesture seemed uncharacteristically uncertain.

“He said he needed four seats on a plane and documents his mother could not stop. I told him I could arrange it. He said he would call the next morning. He died before sunrise.”

Mariana heard the house settle around them. A refrigerator motor switched on in the kitchen.

“Four seats,” she said.

“You and the girls.”

“He never told me.”

“He may have been trying to protect you.”

“Do not make him noble for hiding things.”

Adrián’s mouth tightened.

“That was not my intention.”

“Everyone has an intention when they talk about a dead man. Beatriz wants him obedient. The lawyers want him careless. The newspapers wanted him drunk. You want him frightened enough to forgive whatever you failed to do.”

Adrián looked at her for a long moment.

“That is fair.”

She hated him slightly for accepting the accusation.

Teresa returned with a cold compress wrapped in a towel. She handed it to Mariana and looked at Adrián.

“The youngest one wants her yellow rabbit.”

“It’s at the mansion,” Mariana said.

“Then tonight she gets a blue towel shaped badly like a rabbit. Tomorrow, someone solves the larger tragedy.”

Teresa walked away before anyone could reply.

Mariana pressed the compress to her cheek. The cold hurt first, then numbed the heat.

“What happens tomorrow?” she asked.

Adrián put on his watch.

“Beatriz will try to control the story.”

“She always does.”

“She will say you left voluntarily. If that fails, she will say you are unstable. If she becomes afraid, she may say I abducted you.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“People may not believe that.”

“They usually believe the worst thing they have heard about me.”

“Is it usually true?”

“Enough of it.”

The answer sat between them without apology.

Mariana climbed the stairs.

The girls had been placed in a bedroom with two beds and a sofa. Teresa had found T-shirts long enough to serve as nightgowns. Lucía held the promised towel rabbit, which had one ear larger than the other. Emilia sat cross-legged beneath the comforter. Renata remained in the black overcoat.

“You can take that off,” Mariana said.

Renata shook her head.

“It’s wet.”

“It’s safe.”

Mariana sat beside her. “A coat cannot make us safe.”

“He did.”

She meant Adrián.

Mariana tucked a strand of hair behind Renata’s ear. “For tonight.”

Renata looked toward the door. “Grandmother meant it.”

“Which part?”

“That we’re useless.”

Emilia’s grip tightened on the blanket.

Mariana removed the cold compress and placed it on the bedside table.

“No.”

“But she said it in front of everyone.”

“People can be wrong in front of everyone.”

“Why didn’t anybody tell her?”

Mariana had no answer that would not damage something further.

Teresa appeared in the doorway with three mugs of warm milk. “Because rich people,” she said, “often confuse silence with agreement. It saves them the trouble of developing personalities.”

A corner of Renata’s mouth moved.

Teresa handed out the mugs. “Drink. Your mother needs to sit down before she falls down, and I refuse to mop up a fourth person.”

Mariana lay between the girls after they slept. Lucía’s foot rested against her stomach. Emilia breathed through a stuffy nose. Renata remained awake longer than the others, her back pressed to Mariana’s arm.

“Did Papá know that man?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

“Was he bad?”

Mariana stared at the ceiling.

“When you were little, you thought the dentist was bad.”

“He hurt my mouth.”

“He fixed your tooth.”

“Grandmother hurt your mouth.”

“Yes.”

“So is she bad?”

The child’s logic left no room for the careful distinctions adults used to survive one another.

“She did something bad,” Mariana said.

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I know.”

Renata shifted beneath the coat. “I don’t want to go back.”

Mariana closed her eyes.

“Neither do I.”

At six the next morning, her missing phone became irrelevant.

Beatriz had canceled it.

Diego brought a new device to the kitchen, still sealed in its box. He placed it beside a plate of toast while Mariana drank coffee that tasted stronger than anything she had made at the mansion.

“I cannot accept this.”

“It costs less than one of the crystal glasses you kept from breaking,” he said.

“That does not make it yours to give.”

“It belongs to the security company.”

“That sounds worse.”

Diego almost smiled. “Use it for forty-eight hours. Return it scratched.”

She turned it on.

Twenty-three messages arrived within minutes.

Two were from cousins asking whether she was safe. Five were from unknown reporters. One came from the director of the girls’ school, requesting an urgent conversation about “family circumstances.” Eight were from Esteban Luján.

The last message from him read: Your continued association with Mr. Valdés may have serious implications for custody.

Mariana stared at the screen.

Adrián entered the kitchen in a clean black shirt. He had shaved around the edges of his beard but not slept; a faint darkness showed beneath his eyes.