I saw some black heels. A woman came in talking on a loudspeaker.
“I’m already inside,” he said.
The male voice that answered froze my blood.
“Look behind the mirror. The policy should be there.”
I covered my mouth with both hands.
It was Diego.
My husband is dead.
The woman opened drawers, moved perfumes, threw papers around. Then she came over to my desk and picked up Diego’s photo.
“Poor Mariana,” he murmured. “Two years crying for you, and you just listening from here.”
Diego let out a low laugh from the phone.
I felt something inside me break silently.
The woman kept searching. Diego was giving her instructions. They were talking about deeds, insurance policies, papers I should never have kept. Then he said:
“Check under the mattress.”
The woman placed a hand on the bed.
I already had my cell phone in my hand. I had dialed 911 before hiding. I pressed call, turned the volume all the way down, and left the phone face down, with the microphone open.
The woman lifted one corner of the mattress.
At that moment, someone hit the gate hard.
“Mariana!” Doña Elvira shouted from the street. “I know someone’s there!”
The woman let go of the mattress.
“Your neighbor is outside,” she whispered.
Diego cursed.
“Don’t open it. Go out through the patio.”
“What if Mariana is here?”
There were 2 seconds of silence.
Then Diego said:
“Then find her.”
The woman bent down.
His face appeared in front of mine.
Light eyes, red lips, a small scar near her eyebrow. I recognized her from an old photo that Diego had saved in the cloud and swore she was “an insurance client.”
Brenda.
She smiled.
“Hello, widow.”
I screamed.
It wasn’t a loud scream. It was a broken sound, as if all the grief she had carried for two years had suddenly burst forth.
Brenda reached out to grab me, but I kicked her with all my might and rolled to the other side of the bed. Diego’s photo fell to the floor and the glass shattered.
“Don’t let her out!” Diego shouted from the phone.
And there, under my own bed, I understood something terrible: the man whose grave I had taken flowers to was not only alive. He had turned my grief into a trap.
And the worst was just about to begin…
PART 2
I ran barefoot down the hall while Brenda yanked my hair. I felt the tug all the way to the roots, but rage gave me a strength I didn’t know I had. I elbowed her in the stomach, opened the front door, and ran out into the street in my pajamas, trembling.
Doña Elvira was standing in front of my gate with the broom held high.
“Help!” she shouted. “They’ve broken into Mariana’s house!”
The neighbors started coming out. In Mexico, nobody wants to get involved, but everyone looks when trouble erupts. Don Ramiro, from house number 12, called 911. A young woman recorded it with her cell phone. The security guard from the gated community ran from his booth.
Brenda tried to escape through the backyard. She didn’t make it to the fence. Doña Elvira’s son, who was fixing motorcycles in his garage, stopped her by the sink. She yelled that she was my cousin, that I was sick, that Diego had died, and that she had only come in to help me.
Nobody believed him.
Because my cell phone was still under the bed with the call still open.
And from Brenda’s phone, still on speakerphone, Diego’s voice could be heard:
“Brenda, answer me. Did you find the papers?”
Silence fell upon the street like a bucket of ice water.
Not even Brenda spoke.
Neither do I.
Not even the neighbors.
Because they had all just heard a dead man giving orders.
