And at the center of it all was her, Elena.
She wasn’t sitting reading a story, she wasn’t preparing bottles.
The dark-haired young woman was lying on the floor, face up, completely stretched out on the beige rug.
But what made Roberto’s mouth drop open in disbelief was her attire and her posture.
She was wearing that bright blue nurse’s uniform that Gertrudis had forced her to wear, saying it gave the house a touch of class, but on her hands she wore yellow rubber gloves,
the kind used for scrubbing toilets or cleaning greasy dishes.
“Up with my brave ones!” Elena shouted from the floor with a smile so wide it seemed to distort her face with pure joy.
Roberto blinked in astonishment.
His children, his heirs, the twins Nico and Santi, barely a year old, were standing on top of her, literally on top of her.
It was a human tower of instability and jubilation.
Nico stood on the nanny’s chest, his colorful sneakers pressing against the embroidered logo of her uniform, while Santi balanced on her stomach…
The children wore their light denim overalls and white T-shirts and looked like little acrobats, high on adrenaline. “Watch out for the north wind!” Elena exclaimed, shaking her body as if in a gentle earthquake. Santi, the smallest and most fragile, the one the doctors had said had motor problems, the one who barely crawled when Roberto was around, stood there upright, his legs trembling with exertion, but laughing with his mouth open, showing his few white gums. The baby steadyed himself by placing his chubby little hands on Elena’s shoulders, using her as a balance beam, while his brother Nico raised his arms in the air as if he had just conquered Mount Everest.
Natural light streamed through the windows, illuminating the dust swirling in the air, stirred up by the movement. It was a picture of perfect chaos. Elena held the children’s ankles with her bright yellow gloved hands, her legs stretched out and tense, acting as the solid foundation of this human house of cards. To any outsider, it would have been a photograph of pure love, of instinctive connection. But for Roberto, filtered through the pain of his widowhood and his obsession with control, it was an aberration.
He saw germs on the gloves, he saw danger at heights, he saw disrespect on the ground, he saw a maid turning his children into circus attractions. His blood boiled. The businessman, the cold strategist, vanished. Only the terrified father and the offended employer remained. But what the hell, he whispered at first, unable to raise his voice. At that moment, Elena made an airplane sound with her mouth and the children burst into a new wave of laughter, oblivious to the dark, rigid figure watching them from the doorway, suitcase forgotten and eyes bloodshot with fury.
Roberto felt that this happiness was an insult to his pain. How dare she make them laugh like that when he, their own father, couldn’t even elicit a smile from them? The spell was broken by the sound of Roberto’s voice. It wasn’t a shout, it was a dry, authoritarian thunderclap, laden with venom. Elena, the effect was immediate and catastrophic. The physical harmony that kept the three of them in balance depended entirely on concentration and calm. Upon hearing the roar of her name, Elena had an involuntary spasm of fear.
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