‘I think I’m going to bed,’ you say.
Alejandro stares at you a little longer than he should. Then he smiles again. “Good girl.”
That sentence is truly breathtaking.
You are twenty-three, not ten, and yet for the past few months he has been talking to you as if his grief has softened him. He brings you food without you asking. He keeps your keys. He answers the phone before you do. He says things like: “You don’t feel like dealing with all that paperwork,” “I’ll just hire a lawyer,” and “Just trust me, sis, I know what’s best.” Each of these actions, individually, can maintain the illusion of concern. And together, they form a sort of cage.
You take the cup upstairs.
The hallway creaks under your feet. The rain taps softly against the tall windows at the end of the hallway, where the old stained-glass windows cast distorted colors onto the floor, even at night, when lightning shoots in a zigzag pattern over the hills. The faint scent of your mother’s lavender sachets still lingers in your bedroom, though the fragrance has faded since her death, the edges frayed like all the security features in this house.
You close the door when you come in, but you don’t lock it.
Alejandro hates closed doors.
You learned this the hard way, two weeks after the funeral, when he woke you at sunrise, pale with suppressed rage, and you asked why, after everything, you had locked up your own brother. He spoke softly. So softly that fear undoubtedly screamed after him.
So leave the lock untouched for now.
You move cautiously through the room, your ears throbbing. First to the sink, where you slowly pour tea into a cracked blue porcelain bowl, the sound muffled by the folded towel at the bottom. Then to the bed, where you fluff the sheets and place the empty mug on the nightstand. Next, you turn off one light and leave the other dimmed, as you usually do when the drug-induced heaviness takes over.
You are going to lie down under a blanket fully clothed.
And then you wait.
At first, the expectation seems theatrical, almost absurd. Your body expects the familiar feeling of despondency, the thick, velvety mist that usually appears fifteen minutes after tea and turns the world into tar. But tonight your mind remains sharp. Every object in the room has meaning. The cupboard in the corner. The narrow desk by the window. The portrait of your mother above the small bookcase, painted when she was thirty, and still with an aura as if hope had not yet penetrated your blood.
You think back to those mornings when you woke up and parts of your body were missing.
The inexplicable pain in your wrists, as if you had tightened them too much. The mud on your flip-flops that you didn’t remember wearing outside. The moment you saw a dark speck of dust on the hem of your nightgown and Alejandro said you were probably sleepwalking again. Again, even though you had never sleepwalked in your life. The moment he always knew exactly how tired you were, even before you said anything.
The old clock in the hallway begins to strike nine.
