But this Elena, Elena was an enigma—too young, too inexperienced, and, according to Doña Gertrudis, his trusted housekeeper, too vulgar for the family’s standards.
“I’m telling you, when you’re not here, that girl does strange things,” Gertrudis had whispered to him that morning with that grimace of feigned concern that Roberto mistook for loyalty. “
Children don’t cry, sir, and that’s not normal.
Children always cry.
If they don’t cry, it’s because you’ve drugged them or scared them.”
Those words burned in his chest as he pushed open the door.
A widowed father’s fear is a dangerous fuel.
It turns to anger before there’s any proof.
Roberto went inside, gently placed his briefcase on the floor, and strained his ears.
He expected crying.
He expected to see Elena asleep on the sofa.
He expected to see the television blaring, but what he heard froze him in the hallway.
It wasn’t crying, it wasn’t television; it was a guttural, explosive, rhythmic sound—laughter, but not timid
giggles, rather deep, guttural laughter, the kind that hurts in your stomach, the kind he hadn’t heard in that house for over a year.
It was his sons, Nico and Santi.
Roberto felt a knot in his stomach at their laughter.
Curiosity and panic mingled.
He moved down the hallway, his Italian-soled shoes barely touching the polished wood, guided by the sound of their joy, which he felt as a personal affront in his solemn home.
Upon reaching the threshold of the living room, the scene that unfolded before his eyes was so absurd, so surreal, and so contrary to every rule of etiquette, that it took his brain several seconds to process the information.
The room, usually a temple of minimalist order and neutral colors, resembled the stage of an avant-garde play.
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