Camila watched the whole thing without making a sound. Then she watched it again.
When she finally turned to her sister, her expression was one nobody in that family had ever seen on her.
“Why?”
Daniela broke.
“I didn’t want him to — I only wanted Rafael to see that you’re not the only one who gets to have everything. That you’re not the only one who—”
“You were going to let my son drown,” Camila said, and her voice cracked down the middle. “For what, Daniela? For what?”
“I thought she’d get him out fast,” Daniela sobbed. “I thought—”
“You thought about my son dying to make yourself feel less small!”
Rafael stood up slowly from the chair, looking like a man who had aged in an hour. He crossed to the window where Amparo stood with Tomás finally asleep against her shoulder.
“Amparo.” His voice failed on the second syllable. “Forgive me.”
She looked at him without answering. The red marks on her arm had not faded.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“No,” she said. Not sharply. Not bitterly. Just tired. “You shouldn’t have. But it’s finished now. What matters is that Tomás is all right.”
Those few plain words undid him completely. He covered his face with both hands and cried like a boy.
Camila came and gently took her son. “Thank you,” she said into the baby’s hair. “Thank you for saving him.”
Amparo nodded — and only then, after the entire afternoon, did her own eyes finally spill.
