“Emiliano,” Oscar warned, “you better stop talking.”
The boy flinched.
Lucía moved as much as her restraints allowed, putting herself between Oscar and her son. “Do not speak to him.”
Oscar laughed without humor. “You still think you get to give orders? Look where you are.”
The words should have hurt. They had hurt for years. But now Lucía’s eyes were locked on her son’s face. Emiliano was trembling so hard his small shoulders shook under his jacket. He had been two years old the night Samuel died, just a baby with chubby hands and a blue toy car he pushed across the kitchen floor. Everyone had said he was too young to remember. Everyone had repeated it until it became convenient truth.
But trauma has its own memory. It hides in smells, in sounds, in the way a child stops sleeping with the lights off.
