Patricia71

With the house all to ourselves and him turned away among the rose bushes, I knew that afternoon I wouldn’t be satisfied with just watching him from the window.

When Greta opened the bathroom door and found us like that, I knew the lockdown was only just beginning to drag all our secrets into the light.

I thought I knew my son until that night, when his confession forced me to choose between indignation and something far darker that had slept for years.

It was three in the morning when I heard the key in the lock. I hid behind the curtain, never imagining what my mother would let them do a meter away from me.

There were no doors, no windows, no tomorrow. Only her and me in that white room, and a heat between us that no longer made sense to deny.

I came home from the hospital with my arm in a cast and a thought I couldn’t shake. That night I went to the bathroom, and my mother appeared in the doorway just when I thought I was alone.

For years I’d imagined her without knowing she was thinking about me too. That Saturday she came down to the living room with a magazine and a question that changed everything.

The Saturday the house was empty, my mother-in-law came into the kitchen barefoot, wearing lingerie that wasn’t for her husband, and smiled like she already knew the ending.

When he saw Camila leaning against the fridge with that half smile, he understood that this summer at his father’s house was going to get a lot more complicated than he’d expected.

I wanted him from my first lovers and never dared to tell him. That afternoon, in front of his camera, I discovered my brother had been holding the same thing back for years.