He shook his head. “Dad did. He hid the key.”
“No,” Camila said through tears. “You both did.”
They returned first to a small rented house in Laredo, not to Nuevo Laredo. Lucía was not ready to cross back into the streets where people had called her murderer. She was not ready to see Samuel’s shop, the market where Canela had disappeared, the house where the hidden drawer waited for six years. Freedom was not simple. Freedom after being caged by a lie felt too big, too loud, too bright.
At night, Lucía woke gasping. Sometimes she still heard the countdown clock. Sometimes she smelled the prison room. Sometimes she reached for her children and panicked if they were not beside her. Camila slept on the couch for the first month because she could not stand being far from her mother. Emiliano refused to sleep unless the hallway light was on.
