My husband never touched me in three years of marriage. Then one stormy night, I heard a stranger’s voice coming from my mother-in-law’s room… And the truth behind that door made my blood run cold.

Not the polite kind that rolls somewhere far beyond the mountains and fades before it can mean anything, but the kind that lands hard over the house and rattles the windows in their frames. For a few seconds I lie still beneath the blanket, disoriented, listening to the rain lash the gutters and the old pipes shiver behind the walls. Monterrey storms always seemed to arrive with personality, loud and theatrical, as if the sky itself had opinions.

Then I hear the voices.

At first I think I am still dreaming. Teresa almost never leaves her room after nine, and at this hour the whole house should be sealed in silence except for the storm. But the voices are real. One is low and tense, unmistakably my husband’s. The other is thinner, strained, almost hoarse, and absolutely not Teresa’s.

I sit up so quickly the sheet twists around my legs.