‘Of course you are.
Let me guess.
You need the money, you think you can handle me, and someone in the hall told you I’m impossible.’
She did not answer, and for some reason that seemed to annoy him more than a denial would have.
The first hour was pure resistance.
He corrected the way she folded a blanket.
He told her the water was too warm, then too cool.
He refused help when she offered it and then looked irritated when she stepped back.
Every movement seemed designed to remind her that she was an intruder in his private misery.
But Paloma stayed calm because she had endured worse than a bitter man in a silk robe.
She had slept through power outages.
She had stood in grocery lines with coins counted in her palm.
She had already lost too much to be frightened by attitude.
When evening came, the staff explained the routine: medication, movement assistance, hygiene, bathing.
The last word made Paloma’s throat tighten.
Bathing a man she did not know was one thing in theory.
Another thing entirely in a marble bathroom big enough to hold the entire kitchen of her apartment.
Steam rose softly from the water.
White towels were folded with military precision.
The lighting was warm but low, reflecting on the tiled floor like moonlight trapped inside a palace.
Mr.
Zarate watched her from the chair with a hard expression that tried to make the moment feel ordinary.
‘Go ahead,’ he said.
‘You wanted this job.’
Paloma stepped closer, hands trembling despite her efforts to hide it.
She unbuttoned his shirt one button at a time, telling herself not to think, not to feel, not to make this harder than it already was.
Then she saw the mark.
Just below his collarbone was a small crescent birthmark, dark against his skin.
Her fingers stopped moving.
Her chest tightened so fast it almost hurt.
No.
She looked again, as if staring harder might turn it into something else.
But there was no mistake.
The shape, the placement, the exact curve of it.
She had seen that mark before, long ago, when she was small enough to be lifted onto a shoulder and carried through rain.
Then her eyes fell lower.
A thin silver chain rested against his chest, tucked beneath the shirt.
The clasp was broken in the same place she remembered.
A tiny blue bead still hung near the end, chipped and faded, but unmistakable.
The chain her mother had tied around her brother’s neck.
Paloma felt the room tilt.
Because the last time she had seen that chain, her brother Tomas had been standing in the doorway of their old house during a storm, rain dripping from his hair, promising he would be back soon with medicine for their mother.
She had been ten years old.
He had been twenty.
He had turned, waved once, and vanished into the dark.
By morning the streets were flooded.
By noon the neighbors were whispering.
By evening her mother was crying into a dish towel while the police said maybe he ran away.
Paloma had spent twenty years trying not to believe that lie.
Her knees gave way before she could stop them.
She dropped to the floor, trembling so hard her teeth nearly clicked
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