I froze.

It wasn’t just because of Iván’s lyrics, nor because of the direction in Las Joyas, nor even because of the threat hidden in that last sentence. It was because of the way it all fell into place, like pieces of a puzzle you’ve had in front of your face for years without wanting to see it.

My dad closing the coffin without allowing my mom to look.
My dad avoiding the cemetery.
My father always saying that the dead should rest.
My dad changing the subject every time I mentioned Iván.

For eight years, I believed that these things were born of pain. Yesterday, sitting in the car with the air turned off and my hands soaked with sweat, I understood that perhaps they were born out of fear.

I looked at the time on the board.

11:07 p.m.

I had twenty-three minutes left to decide whether I was about to walk into a trap or into the truth that had been stolen from us for almost a decade.

My first impulse was to mark my mom. Tell him everything. Get her out of the house. Put her in the car and take her with me. But I reread the note: “If Dad finds out before you hear me, Mom is in danger.”

It didn’t say “we run.” It said “mom.”

That scared me more than everything else.

Because it meant that Ivan wasn’t thinking about him first. Not even in me. I was thinking about her.

And if he was alive after eight years, if he had worked who knows how long in hiding, if he had asked me to be silent with that desperation in his eyes… then it could not be a whim. There was something big, something dirty, something that was still breathing under the roof of my house.

I put the note in my bra, as if someone could snatch it from me, and started the car.

The streets of León at that time have a strange sadness. They are not completely empty, but they are not alive either. I passed through avenues with traffic lights changing for no one, through taco stands lifting the last pots, through motorcycles with two boys without helmets, through couples leaving cafeterias that were still oblivious to the fact that my world had just opened up in a canal.

As I drove to Las Joyas, I thought about the last time I saw Ivan “before I died.”

He was twenty-two years old. I seventeen. We had argued over a silly thing, I think over my dad’s car. He wanted to take him to Silao to see some friends and I told him that he was irresponsible, that he was always involved in strange things. I remember perfectly because that was the last time I spoke to him angrily. He laughed, pulled my braid and said: “Already mature, dwarf.” Hours later came the call of the alleged accident. After that everything was smoke, sedatives for my mother, neighbors coming and going, prayers, paperwork, silence.

Silence, above all.

I took the detour to Las Joyas and felt my stomach close. That colony had always seemed like another world to me. Poorly paved streets, half-built houses, skinny dogs, businesses with graffitied metal curtains. Mar de Plata 118 was a narrow house, with a faded green façade, with a yellow light flashing next to the door.

I parked half a block early.

I turned off the car and checked in the rear-view mirror. No one seemed to follow me. Even so, I stood there for almost a whole minute, breathing hard, repeating to myself that if it was really Ivan on the other side of that door, I had been waiting for this moment for eight years without knowing it.

I went downstairs.

The street smelled of dampness, burnt grease and recent garbage. A television was blaring in a neighboring house. I knocked twice, just as he had done with his knuckles so many nights in my bedroom window when he was late and didn’t want to wake my parents.

Nothing.

I played again.

The door opened just a few inches and half a face appeared behind the security chain. The scar on his chin, the dark eyes, the tense jaw.

Ivan.

My brother.

My legs buckled. I didn’t cry right away. It was worse. It was as if the body did not know what to do with something so impossible.

He glanced over his shoulder at me quickly, checking the street.

“Are you coming alone?”

I nodded.

“Sure?”

“Yes.

He took off the chain and pulled me inside with an urgency that frightened me more than it reassured me. He closed with two locks, drew a thick curtain, and only then did he look at me again as if he could afford to recognize me.

We stood face to face in a small room with an old sofa, a plastic table and a fan making a dry, insistent noise.

I was the first to speak.

“We’ll bury you.”

My voice broke.

He closed his eyes for a second, just like in the OXXO.

“I know.

“Mom cries for you every month.

His throat moved, but he said nothing.

Then I did cry. Not pretty. Not a soap opera. I cried ugly, with anger, with shame, with the years stuck coming out suddenly.

I hit him in the chest with both fists.

“Where were you?!” What the fuck is wrong with you?! How could you do this?!

He let her beat him. He did not defend himself. He just endured, as if he had been waiting for eight years for someone to do it.

“Forgive me,” he said at last, in a broken voice that did not know him. Forgive me, Sofi. But I didn’t die because they didn’t let me die.

That slowed me down.

I put my hands down.

“I don’t understand.

He ran a hand over his face and pointed to the chair in front of the table.

“Sit down.” And please, for whatever you want, don’t raise your voice.

I didn’t sit down right away.

“First tell me something. Why can’t I tell Dad?

The answer did not take a second.

“Because Dad knows I’m alive.

The air in the room turned to glass.

I sat down without realizing it.

Iván walked to the kitchenette, poured water into a plastic cup and drank it in one fell swoop. His right arm was more marked, as if he had worked carrying things. Rough hands. The posture of someone who sleeps little and is very suspicious. He was no longer the smiling boy who thought he owned the world. It was something else. Somewhat hardened.

“The accident did happen,” he began. But I wasn’t alone.

I felt a hole in my stomach.

“With whom?”

“With a friend of dad’s. Or at least that’s what I thought. He asked me to accompany him to Silao to pick up some documents. He told me that it was fast, that Dad already knew.

“What documents?”

Ivan let out a bitter laugh.

“That’s what I wanted to find out when it started to smell funny. We had a black backpack, locked with a padlock. The guy wouldn’t even let me see her. On the road they followed us. There were shots. The car went off the road. I hit myself in the head. When I woke up, the car was already on fire and the other man was dead.

My hands froze.

“So… the body?”

“It was him.

I felt like throwing up.

“But the chain, the watch, your papers—”

“They took them from me before I took the body out. Dad arrived before the local police finished cordoning off. Or he had someone there. I don’t know. The only thing I know is that when I came back to myself, I was in a house I didn’t know, blindfolded, with a doctor checking on me and dad sitting in front of the bed.

He said it so dry that it gave me chills.

“And what did he tell you?”

Ivan looked at me as if he still heard that voice.

“That I was officially dead.” That it was the only way to save us.

“Save us from what?”

“What that backpack brought.

I pressed my fingers against my knees.

“What was inside?”

“I didn’t see her that day. I saw it later.

He remained silent.

“Ivan.

“Notebooks.” Account statements. Copies of transfers. Names. Dates. Payments. A lot of money moving between shell companies, construction companies, political campaigns, police, notaries. A piggery. And also photos. Photos of people entering and leaving the house. From mom. Yours. Mine.

I felt a horrible vertigo.

“Dad?”

He nodded.

“Dad had been involved in something bigger than he seemed for years. It was not only the workshop, nor the repair shop, nor its transport “businesses”. He laundered money for heavy people, Sofi. And I think he started saving evidence as insurance. To defend themselves. Or to blackmail. I don’t know. But someone wanted to recover that. The man who came with me was going to deliver him. And it didn’t come.

I froze, seeing a fixed point on the wall.

My father.

The same man who on Sundays grilled meat in the courtyard and complained about the price of lemon. The same one who taught me how to drive. The same one who slept next to my mother while she continued to cry for a son he knew was alive.

“No,” I whispered. No, that can’t…

“I also said I couldn’t. Until he showed me the accounts. Until I heard calls. Until I understood that the crash was no coincidence.

“Then why didn’t you go to the police?”

His gaze changed. She became tough.

“Because the first two policemen I saw in the safe house greeted Dad by name.

The fan continued to spin with its monotonous rattle. I felt that everything I thought was firm was rotting all at once.

“Did he have you kidnapped?”

Ivan took a deep breath.

—The first months, yes. I changed places. Always with the same story: “It’s for your good. If they know you survived, they kill you.” I was injured, confused, and besides… I wanted to believe him. It was my dad.

“And then?”

“Then he told me that I could start from scratch, but with a different name. It was in his interest that the world should think I was dead. People looking for the backpack also found it convenient. Everyone was a winner… except mom.

My voice broke.

“Why didn’t you escape?”

He held my gaze.

“Because the first time I tried, she sent me a photo of Mom leaving mass and told me that if I did something stupid, she would be the one to pay for it.

My eyes filled with tears again.

“Son of—”

“Yes,” he murmured. I thought that too.

We remained silent. A motorcycle passed outside. In the neighboring house someone laughed loudly. It was unbearable that the world continued normally.

“Then why now?” I asked. Why did you let yourself be seen?

Ivan tensed.

“Because something changed two weeks ago. Dad is desperate.

“Why?”

“Because someone asked for the backpack again.”

I looked at him without understanding.

“But you said he had it.

“He did. Not anymore.

He leaned over to me.

“Before I “died,” I did get to see it. And then, when he hid me, I realized that this mother was the only thing keeping him alive. Your insurance policy. Then one day, when he left me alone for a few hours believing that I was already tamed… I stole it from him.

My jaw dropped.

“You?”

“Not complete.” The most important thing. A notebook and a memory. I hid them where he would never look.

My head was going too fast.

“Where?”

“I’m not going to tell you yet.

“Ivan!”

“The less you know, the better.”

It made me want to hit him again.

“Eight years disappeared and you still come to give me orders.

“They are not orders. It’s fear.

He said it with such tired sincerity that he silenced me.

“Dad thinks I’m still hiding out of terror. She doesn’t know that I’ve been moving for months, changing jobs, looking for a way to get mom out without setting off alarms. But yesterday one of his old men saw me in the OXXO area. I’m almost sure. That’s why I couldn’t wait any longer.

My heart jumped.

“Did they follow us today?”

“I don’t know. I checked three times before opening the door for you. But with him you never know.

I got up suddenly and went to the window, barely moving the curtain.

The street was still just as sad. A taxi passed slowly. A dog was sniffing a broken bag. Nothing out of place.

“What do you want us to do?” I asked without turning around.

“Get mom out of the house tomorrow.”

I turned immediately.

“Tomorrow?” That is going to raise suspicions.

“I’ve already raised them, so that you can see me.”

“But Dad doesn’t know.

“We still don’t know what he knows.

That phrase stuck with me.

Ivan walked over to the table and took out an old knapsack from under the tablecloth. He opened it just to show me a cheap cell phone, some money, a cap, a yellow folder and a thick envelope.

“Not everything is here, but it is enough to start if something happens to me.

“Don’t say that.

“Listen to me. Tomorrow you’re going to do your normal routine. You’re going to work. You’re going to write to Mom at six to tell her you’re inviting her to dinner. Tell him not to tell Dad. He invents any pretext.

“You’ll notice that.

“Your mom already does things without telling her. Especially when it comes to you.

I had to admit that it was true.

“And then?”

“You pick it up. You take it to the parish of San Judas, that of Jardines del Moral. Two people will be waiting for you there.

“Who?”

“People who have not yet sold their souls.

“I don’t trust that.

He let out a humorless laugh.

“Neither do I. But I have less confidence in standing still.

I ran both hands through my hair.

“I need to hear everything, Ivan. You can’t tear me apart and expect me to follow you like when I was ten years old.

His expression hardened a little.

“I’m not treating you like a girl. I’m treating you like someone who can still get out of this alive.

“Well, I’m already inside.

That phrase changed something between us. For the first time all night he stopped talking to me as if he were remembering his little sister. She looked at me like a woman up to her neck in the same fire.

“All right,” he said at last. Then hear this: Dad didn’t work just for those people. He also recorded them. He kept copies. It had enough to sink them all if one day they tried to get it out of the way. When the car caught fire, they thought everything had been lost. But then someone started looking for me. Not out of affection. Because they suspected that I knew where the backup was.

“And do you know that?”

He did not answer.

It was not necessary.

“That’s why Mom is in danger,” I murmured. Because if they don’t find you…

“They’re going to put pressure on him. And when a man like dad feels cornered, he doesn’t protect: he sacrifices.

I froze.

I meant no. That no matter how much of a monster he was, he would never touch his mother. But the image of him closing the coffin, sedating her, leaving her to cry for eight years in front of a false grave, crushed any defense.

Then a phone rang.

Not mine. Not yours hand in hand.

The cheap cell phone that was inside the backpack.

Iván turned white.

“Who is it?” I asked.

He did not answer. He looked at the screen as if a ghost had appeared.

“Ivan?”

He showed me the name.

DAD.

I felt like my breath was going out.

He did not answer. He let it vibrate once. Two. Three. When it stopped, we were in absolute silence.

Five seconds later, mine rang.

I pulled it out with trembling hands.

It also said: DAD.

Iván took a step back.

—No le contestes.

But at that same moment another message came in, not from my dad.

From my mother.

Just one line.

“Your dad has been asking where you are for half an hour. And he just said something very strange about Ivan.”

I looked up at my brother.

He no longer had color on his face.

And before he could tell me what to do, we heard the noise of a pickup truck braking outside in front of the house.