The effort of those two words costs you more than anyone can see. Fire tears down your spine. Your hand trembles violently on the armrest. But none of that matters as much as the change in Mauricio’s face—the first clean fracture in a confidence built entirely on your silence.
“Tío…” he says.
You hate how weak it sounds on him.
For six months he has walked through your home like a man measuring curtains before the funeral. He has sat in your office, spoken over your head, directed staff, shifted routines, and slid papers in front of you while believing your body had become a doorway only he could walk through.
Now the doorway answers back.
“Put,” you say again, slower, the word scraping through pain, “her… down.”
Mauricio lets go so fast Carmen nearly misses the catch.
Sofía collapses back into her mother’s arms, sobbing. Carmen curls around her on the floor, shaking. You cannot move fast enough to help them, and the helplessness strikes you so hard it nearly blinds you. Then it becomes something else.
Fury.