Chapter 4 - The Apartment With No Staff
Ana’s apartment had one bathroom, a narrow kitchen, and a refrigerator covered in magnets from places she had actually visited rather than hotels the Arandas owned.
Valeria loved it immediately.
The guest room barely fit a queen bed and a dresser. The curtains came from Target. A neighbor’s dog barked whenever the elevator opened.
Nothing was elegant.
Nothing required permission.
On the first morning, Ana made scrambled eggs and burned the toast.
Valeria sat at the kitchen counter in fuzzy socks, her injured ankle on a second stool.
“You look awful,” Ana said.
“Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Then maybe believe the consensus.”
Valeria laughed, then pressed one hand to her stomach when the baby shifted.
Ana noticed.
“Okay?”
“Yes. She’s kicking.”
“She?”
Valeria blinked.
They had not told anyone the sex.
Not even Esther.
Especially Esther.
Ana grinned. “You said she.”
Valeria covered her face.
“Pregnancy brain.”
“Absolutely not. I am an excellent interrogator.”
Despite everything, Valeria smiled.
It was the first easy moment she had felt in a week.
Then the building buzzer sounded.
Ana looked toward the wall unit.
“If that is your husband, I’m charging him twenty dollars to enter.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I told him not to come unless I invited him.”
Ana stared.
“And he listened?”
“So far.”
The buzzer sounded again.
Ana answered.
A woman’s voice came through the speaker.
“Delivery for Valeria Aranda.”
Ana frowned. “From who?”
“Aranda residence.”
Valeria’s stomach tightened.
“No.”
Ana pressed the button again. “Take it back.”
“It’s flowers.”
“Take them back.”
She released the intercom and looked at Valeria.
“That felt good.”
Valeria laughed once, but her eyes filled.
Ana’s face softened.
“Oh, Val.”
“I hate that flowers scare me.”
“They’re not flowers. They’re a boundary test with stems.”
That was exactly what they were.
Two hours later, Dr. Salazar called.
Valeria put him on speaker so Ana could listen.
Her blood-pressure readings were better but still elevated. He wanted her seen in clinic the next morning.
“And no more house calls,” Valeria said.
He hesitated. “I agree.”
Ana looked at the phone.
“You say that like you know it was a bad idea.”
“I knew it then,” Salazar said.
Valeria shifted in her chair.
He continued. “I thought getting eyes on her was better than leaving her alone in that house. But I should have pushed harder for emergency evaluation the first night.”
“You tried,” Valeria said.
“I still let your fear of the family determine part of your medical care. That was not ideal.”
Ana gave Valeria a look that said: finally, an adult who admits things.
After the call, Valeria took her blood pressure, wrote the number in a notebook, and stared at it too long.
“What?” Ana asked.
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
Valeria folded the cuff.
“I keep thinking I should call Alejandro.”
That night, after Ana left for a short grocery run, Valeria stood in front of the bathroom mirror and lifted the hem of her nightgown.
The bruises looked worse under the harsh light.
One spread along her thigh in a shape that no longer resembled the staircase so much as a map of every decision she had postponed.
She touched the yellow edge with two fingers.
She remembered telling Alejandro in August that she wanted to move before the baby came.
He had been shaving.
He barely looked away from the mirror.
“After the pregnancy,” he had said. “You’re uncomfortable. That’s not the same as unhappy.”
At the time, she had let him define the difference.
Why?
Because he had been tired.
Because Esther was in the next room.
Because Valeria had grown up in a family where good women did not make men choose between wife and mother unless something was truly unbearable.
She had spent months raising the threshold of unbearable.
The fall had only made the line visible.
Ana returned carrying paper bags and found Valeria sitting on the closed toilet lid, crying quietly.
She put the bags down.
“Pain?”
Valeria shook her head.
“Then what?”
“I keep thinking if I had left when I first wanted to, none of this would have happened.”
Ana crouched in front of her.
“Maybe.”
Valeria looked at her, surprised by the lack of reassurance.
Ana continued. “Or something different would have happened. You don’t get to turn hindsight into evidence that you deserved this.”
“I’m not saying I deserved it.”
“You’re saying you failed to prevent it. That’s close enough to keep you miserable.”
Valeria wiped her face.
“I hate when you’re useful.”
“I know.”
Ana stood and offered a hand.
“Come on. I bought ice cream and the cereal you pretend you don’t like.”
“What cereal?”
“The one with marshmallows.”
“I’m pregnant, not eight.”
“Tell that to the box.”
Valeria laughed and let her sister pull her up.
For one evening, she allowed herself to be cared for without being managed.
The difference was becoming easier to recognize.
“I keep thinking I should call Alejandro.”
“So call him.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
Ana scraped burnt toast into the trash. “Try a sentence with a subject and a verb.”
Valeria glared.
“I’m serious. You two have spent years talking around the actual problem.”
“You’ve seen us six times.”
“I’ve heard you for six years.”
That was different.
And true.
Valeria called him.
He answered on the first ring.
“Are you okay?”
She closed her eyes.
“Can you not ask that first every time?”
A pause.
“Okay.”
He sounded so careful that she almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
“I have a clinic appointment tomorrow,” she said. “I want you there.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And I need you to hear something before then.”
“I’m listening.”
She looked toward Ana, who silently picked up her coffee and left the room.
Valeria lowered her voice.
“The photograph wasn’t the reason you suspected me.”
Alejandro said nothing.
“You were already suspicious.”
More silence.
“Why?” she asked.
He exhaled slowly. “You were distant.”
“I was scared.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You knew I stopped sleeping. You knew I started taking calls in the bathroom because your mother walked into our bedroom without knocking. You knew I asked you twice if we could move out before the baby came.”
He stayed quiet.
Valeria’s throat tightened.
“You told me not to make permanent decisions during pregnancy.”
“I remember.”
“You turned my discomfort into hormones because it was easier.”
“Yes.”
The immediate agreement disarmed her.
Alejandro continued. “And when security showed me the photo, I used it to explain everything I hadn’t wanted to look at.”
Valeria’s eyes filled.
“That hurt more than if you had screamed.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You’re right.”
She hated how much she needed him not to defend himself.
She hated more that it felt new.
After they hung up, Ana came back carrying two mugs.
“Well?”
“He listened.”
Ana set one mug down.
“Careful. One decent phone call does not rebuild a house.”
Valeria nodded.
That afternoon, someone knocked on the apartment door.
Not the buzzer downstairs.
The door itself.
Ana went still.
Valeria’s heart began to pound.
A voice came through the wood.
“Valeria?”
Not Esther.
Rafael.
Ana looked at her.
“Want me to send him away?”
Valeria stared at the door.
Then she said, “No.”
Because unlike Esther, Rafael had not been the hand that grabbed her.
He had been the man who watched.
May you like
And Valeria had questions for him that Alejandro could not answer.
