Taboo

When I felt my sleeping son’s body pressed against my back that dawn, I did not move away. Something older than me chose for me, and I knew I no longer wanted to stop it.

He had been sleeping pressed against her back for a week to soothe the baby. A week of pretending not to notice what was happening between them in the dark.

The first night I only wanted to look. By the third, I could no longer stop my hand. When she turned in the darkness and smiled at me, I knew I was lost.

My mother got up from the chair, kissed me on the mouth, and without saying a word slid her hand under my pajamas. Only then did I understand what my parents had agreed to during the night.

Eight years abroad turned me into the woman I was always meant to be. But when I crossed the threshold at home, the first thing I found was Mauricio’s hungry look.

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 knew that one day I’d have this conversation with you,” my mother said, closing the door. What she told me that afternoon changed forever what I believed about us.

As soon as I heard her keys fighting the lock, I knew I’d have to play it cool. What I didn’t know was that she’d come home determined not to let me off the hook.

That kiss on the cheek turned toward my mouth, and though I didn’t open my lips, I felt his tongue. That was when I knew stopping my own son would cost me more than I admitted.

They treated him like furniture, absolutely sure nothing they did touched him. It took them weeks to learn how wrong they were.

She stood in front of her bedroom door, holding her breath. One step more and reason would have burned away between us.

I offered to massage her tired feet and, without realizing it, crossed the only line I should never have crossed with her that night.

A single innocent remark from Lucía on the terrace brought every gaze down on us, and Marina’s hand found mine under the table.

I went downstairs for a glass of water at three in the morning. What I found there, with the house silent, should never have happened.

She agreed to share her bed just so she wouldn’t lose me. She had no idea how far I was willing to go so I wouldn’t lose her.

I left my father’s villa for my grandparents’ house in the village. I had no idea my aunt, the most devout woman in town, would end up naked in my bed for an envelope full of bills.

Her mother called me a dreamer, her father humiliated me by the car. When it was all over, Helena came down the stairs, took my hand, and led me to her room.

He sent me the photo while my husband was driving beside him. I didn’t reply, but that image stayed in my head all day.

When she comes down for breakfast in a T-shirt and panties, I melt inside and know this weekend at the country house will be my last chance to stay silent.

My niece climbed into my bed with an indecent proposal, and I never imagined my son would be spying on us from the hallway door.