Elena came out despite Rosa trying to hold her back.
She saw Lucía on the floor and crossed the hallway without hesitation, wrapping her blanket around the little boy instead of herself.
That small gesture cut me more sharply than fear had.
Children learn what adults model.
I wanted her to learn kindness.
I did not want kindness to require this much courage so soon.
We did not sleep after that.
At dawn I sent Rosa to town on the mule cart with a note for Father Anselmo and another for Maribel, the only lawyer who had ever helped us without making me feel like a case file.
I told Rosa not to speak aloud to anyone she did not trust.
I hated sounding like a woman in a bad story.
I hated more that caution was reasonable.
By nine the rain had thinned to mist.
The house looked ordinary again, which is one of the cruel jokes danger likes to play. It leaves the plates where they were, lets the soup still smell like soup, lets children ask for breakfast.
I was stirring cornmeal when Father Anselmo arrived on foot instead of waiting for Rosa to bring him.
That told me he understood urgency.
He removed his wet hat in the doorway, nodded to the women, and waited until we were in the back room before speaking.
I showed him the money.
I told him what Lucía had said, no more and no less.
He listened with the same grave expression he wore at burials and baptisms alike, as if human beings were never more alike than when they handed one another impossible choices.
When I finished, he asked, “Do you trust the local police?”
“No.”
“Any of them?”
I thought of Officer Beltrán, who once ignored bruises because the husband involved donated fuel to town festivals.
“No,” I said again.
The priest folded his hands.
“There is a prosecutor in the district capital,” he said. “A woman. Honest, from what I know. Slow sometimes, but not dirty.”
“Slow can get people hurt.”
“Yes,” he said, and did not insult me by denying it.
Maribel arrived an hour later in a borrowed truck, hair pinned badly, eyes bright with the sort of anger decent women carry when the law lags behind pain.
She read Lucía’s statement twice.
Then she asked the question nobody else had yet asked plainly.
“Do you want protection,” she said to Lucía, “or do you want disappearance?”
Lucía stared at her.
“What is the difference?”
“In one,” Maribel said, “you trust institutions to do what they promise. In the other, you vanish before those promises can fail.”
