Epilogue: The Eighteenth Night
For seventeen nights, Lucía carried her pillow into my bedroom.
For seventeen nights, I thought she was strange.
For seventeen nights, I believed she was the problem.
I was wrong.
She wasn’t trying to steal my husband.
She wasn’t trying to destroy my marriage.
She wasn’t trying to come between anyone.
She was trying to protect herself.
The eighteenth night was the first night she didn’t come.
I remember lying in bed, staring at the closed bedroom door.
The house was silent.
Not the fearful silence we had grown used to.
A peaceful silence.
A safe silence.
And as I drifted to sleep, I finally understood why Lucía had insisted on sleeping in the middle of the bed.
Because when everyone else failed to see the danger, she had become the only barrier standing between a predator and his next victim.
