My Nephew Asked Me to Look After His Wife

The call came in on a Tuesday at eleven at night. My brother Adrián had died of a heart attack in the patio of his house, where he had spent thirty-two years pruning the same rosebushes. I had been living in Canada for four decades, I was retired, widowed for seven winters, and I had never imagined I would return to my mountain town under these circumstances.

My name is Octavio, I’m sixty-five years old, and until that dawn, I believed life no longer owed me anything.

I managed to get the first flight out in the morning and landed in the capital after two. I had written to my nephew Mateo to let him know. He offered to pick me up. We hadn’t seen each other in person since his wedding, four years earlier, but we messaged every couple of months. He was a good kid, an engineer, quiet, with the same way of looking as his father.

—Uncle, I’m so sorry, so sorry —he told me, hugging me in the arrivals hall.

The drive to his house took two hours on the highway. We talked about Adrián, about childhood, about the heat, about anything at all so we wouldn’t fall silent. We laughed a couple of times, just enough so the laughter wouldn’t feel obscene.

We got there around five. The house was silent, with only one light on in the living room. And there, on the sofa, was she.

His wife had fallen asleep waiting for us. I knew her from photos, but photos weren’t enough. Daniela was young, much younger than I remembered Mateo saying she was. She must have been about twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Her dark hair had fallen across her face, she had fair skin, her legs tucked beneath her body, and a peach-colored nightgown that rode halfway up her thigh.

Mateo woke her gently, kissed her forehead, and whispered something to her. She opened her eyes, still drunk on sleep, sat up, and adjusted her nightgown. Her two hands weren’t enough to cover what she wanted to cover. I saw one breast half-baring itself, a gleaming collarbone, bare feet against the cold floor.

—I’m sorry, Uncle Octavio, how embarrassing —she said in a hoarse voice.

—You’re the one who stayed up for us —I told her—. I’d be the embarrassed one if I’d woken you at this hour.

That night I didn’t sleep.

I masturbated four times in the darkness of the guest room, looking at a framed photo of the two of them on the beach that someone had hung opposite the bed. In the photo, Daniela was wearing a black bikini and laughing with her mouth open. Each time I finished, I lay still, listening to the silence, waiting for God or whatever it was to come down on me for being a filthy old man.

***

The next day Mateo left early. It was the first Monday after the death and, as he’d explained the night before, his boss had already given him too many days off. I heard him from my room, moving carefully so he wouldn’t make noise. Before leaving, I heard him again in the hallway. A low laugh, the rustle of fabric, a kiss that sounded wet.

I opened the door a couple of inches. They were standing in front of their bedroom door. Mateo had his hands under Daniela’s nightgown, his fingers sunk into her hips. She was laughing softly and biting his shoulder. I closed the door before they saw me.

I waited an hour. When I came out, the house smelled of coffee and toast. Daniela was in the kitchen wearing the same nightgown, her feet still bare, the curls in her hair held back with a clip that kept slipping loose. She turned when she heard me.

—Good morning, Uncle. Sit down, breakfast’s almost ready.

I sat with the newspaper open, pretending to read the sports pages. She moved barefoot between the kitchen and the table, and every time she leaned toward the cupboard I could see the curve of her back, her firm legs, that way a woman walks when she knows she’s being watched even if she pretends not to know.

We had coffee. We talked about Adrián, about the family, about Mateo. Then she went into the bedroom and came back changed: a black dress to the knee, a round neckline, her curls loose. Mateo had asked me not to go to the wake alone that afternoon, and Daniela offered to come with me.

—Mateo asked me to take him to the cemetery —she said, adjusting an earring—. If that works for you, we can leave in an hour.

—Sounds fine to me, daughter.

***

The wake was long. I greeted cousins I hadn’t seen since I was twelve, a niece of my sister-in-law with a baby in her arms, a man who said he’d been a friend of Adrián’s since youth and whom I didn’t remember at all. I said the Our Father in front of the coffin. I cried a little, just enough. And through it all, I kept looking for Daniela.

She was always nearby, serving coffee, receiving hugs on my behalf, holding my arm when we went up the chapel steps. People looked at us: the old widower from abroad and the pretty daughter-in-law. No one said anything, but some glances lingered longer than they should have.

By six o’clock it was all over. I suggested dinner out, to thank her for the day. She refused twice. The third time she accepted.

We went to a small restaurant inside a shopping promenade. We ordered fish, a glass of wine, dessert. We talked about her work —she was a music teacher—, about the first time she’d heard Mateo mention me, about the cold I’d be in for when I went back to Canada. After dinner we went for a walk among the still-lit shop windows.

—Uncle, would you mind if I left you for a moment? A friend of mine works at the perfume shop on the corner, I want to say hello.

—Go ahead, daughter. I’ll wait for you here.

While I was walking alone, I saw the necklace in the display window of a jewelry store. A fine gold chain with an oval pendant of red sapphire, the size of my thumbnail. I imagined it on her collarbone. I imagined it between her breasts. I went in, paid with my card without thinking twice, and tucked it into my jacket pocket.

We got back to the house after nine. Mateo had sent us a message to say he had to travel to another province for work for two days. Daniela and I were alone.

***

We sat on the living room sofa. I opened a bottle of whisky I’d bought at the airport. She accepted a glass, then another, then a third. I didn’t count the fourth.

The alcohol gave me courage. I went upstairs to the guest room and came back down with the case.

—Here, this is for you. For putting up with me these past few days.

—Uncle, no, this is too much. I can’t accept something like this.

—I saw it in the window and thought of you. Do me the favor of accepting it, or I’m going to have to take it back to Canada with me.

She laughed with the laugh of a tipsy girl. She accepted it. She lifted her hair with both hands and turned her back so I could fasten it for her. I touched her neck with my fingers as I closed the clasp. I brushed her shoulders. I slid my hands down her arms slowly, as if I were checking that the chain hung straight.

—How does it look on me? —she asked without turning around.

—Beautiful —I said in her ear—. It looks beautiful on you.

My hands moved from her shoulders to her breasts. I felt her breathe more deeply, hold her breath for a second, then let it out. She didn’t pull my hands away. I squeezed just a little, enough to feel the weight through the fabric of the dress. She let out a short sigh.

She stood up suddenly.

—I’m going to freshen up a bit —she said, and walked to the bathroom without looking at me.

I was left alone in the living room with the glass in my hand, feeling like the worst man in the world. I heard her wash her face, then walk down the hallway, then close the door to her bedroom. That was it. I’d gone as far as I could. Tomorrow I’d go to a hotel.

I went upstairs, took off my shoes, lay down with my clothes on. I turned off the light. I closed my eyes.

***

The door opened twenty minutes later.

It was Daniela, barefoot, in the peach-colored nightgown and with the necklace still hanging around her neck. She walked to the bed without saying anything. I didn’t dare move. She climbed astride my legs, yanked down my pants and boxers, and lowered her head.

Her mouth was hot, slow, sure. It had been years since anyone had sucked me like that. Her tongue moved up and down the side of my cock, her hands held my testicles without squeezing, as if she were measuring them. Now and then she looked up at me from below with shining eyes and a mouth full, then went back down.

Then she pulled up her nightgown and settled her breasts around me. She gave me what, when I was young, we used to call a Russian: my cock between her tits, her moving up and down, licking the tip each time it peeked out. No one had ever done that to me before. I gripped the sheets with both hands so I wouldn’t finish.

When she felt I was close, she stopped. She straightened up, slipped off her panties without taking off the nightgown, and sat down on top of me slowly. I felt her opening around me, hot, tight, wet. When she had taken all of me inside, she stayed still for a few seconds, eyes closed, biting her lip.

Then she started moving.

It wasn’t tenderness what she was doing. It was hunger. She went up and down with both hands braced on my chest, her breasts bouncing inside the nightgown, the sapphire pendant knocking against her collarbones. She took my hands and placed them on her chest, beneath the fabric. I squeezed. She moaned loudly, without shame, and sped up.

—Harder —she said—. Squeeze me harder.

I squeezed her breasts until I felt the nightgown dampening against her nipples. The necklace flashed in the reflection of the little lamp that had been left on in the hallway. The bed shook against the wall. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I’d gone seven years without feeling this, and suddenly I was feeling it with my nephew’s wife.

I came inside her without warning. She didn’t give me time to pull out, and she didn’t let me. When she was done wringing me out, she stayed on top for a few more seconds, breathing, smiling faintly. Then she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth. She tasted of whisky and something sweet I couldn’t name.

She got up, adjusted her nightgown, said nothing. She walked barefoot to the door. Before leaving, she turned around and, with one hand still on the doorknob, touched the pendant of the necklace with the other.

—Thank you for the gift, Uncle —she said, and closed the door behind her.

On the sheet, where she had sat, there was a wet stain that didn’t finish drying until morning.

***

I’ve been back in Canada for three weeks. Mateo called me once to thank me for the visit and to ask how I was handling the grief. Daniela sent me a message last Sunday with a photo of herself wearing the necklace, no text. I replied with an emoji. Then I deleted the conversation.

I still don’t know what I’m going to say to my nephew, if I ever work up the courage to tell him. Sometimes I think I have nothing to say, that that night was hers, not mine. And other times, especially at dawn, I remember the weight of the sapphire against my chest when she leaned down to kiss me, and I tell myself that when you’re sixty-five and life has already done everything it had to do to you, the big sins are the only ones worth confessing.