Chapter 3: What Was Under the Bed
I didn't move toward Beatriz.
I didn't need to.
"Stay in this kitchen," I said, without turning around.
"Both of you."
I lifted Isabella off the counter and set her gently on her feet.
I took her hand and walked her toward the hallway stairs.
Behind us, I heard Beatriz's heels shift on the tile.
A small, uncertain sound.
She was deciding something.
"Where are you going?" she called.
"To Isabella's room."
A pause.
"Why?"
I didn't answer.
Isabella's hand tightened around mine as we climbed the stairs.
She was quiet the whole way up.
At the top, she stopped in front of her door and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on her face before.
It wasn't fear exactly.
It was closer to warning.
"Dad," she said carefully.
"It's a little messy."
I opened the door.
It was not messy.
It was stripped.
The bookshelf that had held her picture books, her stuffed animals, the small ceramic horse she had picked out herself at a market in Seville — all of it was gone.
The walls were bare.
The desk in the corner held nothing but a single pencil and a stack of plain paper.
The bed was made with tight, institutional corners.
No extra pillow.
No blanket folded at the foot.
It looked like a room being prepared for someone to leave.
I stood in the doorway for a moment.
Then I walked to the wardrobe and opened it.
Half her clothes were missing.
What remained was pushed to one side, leaving the other half of the rail empty.
On the floor of the wardrobe, where her shoes used to line up in a row, there were two pairs left.
Both were worn through at the toe.
"Where are your things?" I asked.
Isabella sat on the edge of the bed.
"Beatriz said I had too much.
She said children shouldn't be spoiled."
"When did she say that?"
"The third week."
I crouched down in front of her.
"And your books?
Your horse?"
Isabella glanced toward the window.
"She said she donated them."
I stood and crossed to the window.
The garden below was quiet.
I could see the spilled garbage still scattered near the dumpsters.
The torn bag.
The dark stain spreading across the stone.
"Isabella." I turned back.
"Is there anything you want to show me?
Anything you've kept?"
She looked at me for a long moment.
Then she slid off the bed and knelt beside it.
She reached underneath, all the way to the back, and pulled out a small cardboard box.
The kind that might once have held a pair of shoes.
She held it out to me with both hands.
I sat on the floor beside her and opened it.
Inside were three things.
A photograph.
Isabella and Rosa, taken in this kitchen, both of them laughing at something off-camera.
Rosa had her arm around Isabella's shoulder.
On the back, in Rosa's handwriting: *For when you miss me.
I'm not far.*
A folded piece of paper.
I opened it carefully.
It was a list, written in a child's uneven letters.
At the top, Isabella had written: *Things Beatriz took.* Below it, thirty-one items.
Numbered.
The ceramic horse was number four.
Her mother's locket was number nine.
I stopped at number nine.
"Your mother's locket," I said quietly.
"The one I gave you after she passed."
Isabella nodded once.
The third item in the box was a mobile phone.
Small, old, the kind with physical buttons.
Not one I recognized.
"Where did this come from?"
"Rosa left it for me," Isabella said.
"Before she went.
She said to use it only if something really bad happened.
She said to call the number saved in it." She paused.
"I never called.
I was afraid Beatriz would find it."
I turned the phone over in my hands.
It was powered off.
I pressed the button and it came slowly to life.
One contact saved.
The name read: *Someone who will listen.*
I looked at my daughter.
"Did Rosa say who this was?"
"She said it was someone who knew things about Beatriz." Isabella's voice was very small.
"Things from before."
Before.
I had met Beatriz at a charity dinner in Madrid four years ago.
She had been charming, composed, and completely fluent in the language of people who had money.
We married eleven months later.
I had done due diligence on business partners with less scrutiny than I had given my own wife.
I set the phone carefully on the floor between us.
"Has Beatriz ever seen this box?"
"No." Isabella's eyes went to the door.
"I only take it out when she's not home."
Downstairs, I heard Beatriz's heels begin to move across the kitchen tile.
Slow, deliberate steps.
Then the sound of a drawer opening.
Then closing.
I stood up.
"Stay here," I told Isabella.
"Lock the door after I leave.
Don't open it until you hear my voice."
Her eyes went wide.
"Dad—"
"I'll be right back." I touched her cheek once.
"I promise."
I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me.
I heard the small click of the lock a moment later.
At the top of the stairs, I stopped.
Below me, Beatriz was standing at the kitchen island.
She had her phone in one hand.
In the other, she held a glass of water she wasn't drinking.
She looked up at me.
"We need to talk," she said.
May you like
"Right now.
Before you do something you'll regret."
