You stood there in the hospital corridor with the smell of antiseptic and stale coffee in your lungs, rain tapping against the windows at the far end like a warning you were only now learning how to hear.

Lucía had already started moving again, one hand tightening around each little wrist as if her whole body knew instinctively that standing still in front of you was dangerous. The boys kept looking back. One openly curious. The other wary in the way children get when they feel adult tension before they understand adult lies.