Amelie pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to stifle the sobs that tore at her chest, but she couldn't stop her mind from dragging her back to the past...
"Mom?" The childish voice broke the silence of the dark dining room, and a boy of barely eight years old advanced with uncertain steps. "Why is it so dark?"
The moonlight timidly pierced the window, casting broken shadows on the walls. His footsteps echoed in the emptiness, laden with innocent concern.
"Mom, where's Dad? Isn't he back yet?"
The hunched figure of a woman sitting on the floor materialized before his eyes. Defeated, she barely seemed to breathe. The child approached, raising a trembling hand to reach her.
"Mom, are you okay?" his voice broke into a whisper.
The contact never materialized.
"Don't touch me!" The woman's scream pierced the silence like a knife.
The little boy stopped dead in his tracks. His hand remained suspended in the air, trembling. His eyes, two huge wells of confusion and fear, looked at her with an intensity that made her burn inside.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she yelled with a tearing voice. "I'm not the bad guy here! Why are you looking at me as if I were?" Her fingers closed abruptly around the child's arms. "Do I deserve for you to look at me like that?"
The child swallowed his tears, desperate to console her. With an almost superhuman effort, he curved his lips into a broken smile.
"No... you're the best," he murmured, though his small body trembled under the pressure of her hands. "The best mom in the world."
But he couldn't hold back anymore. His pain erupted in an overwhelming cry that echoed in the darkness.
She held him, but not with tenderness, rather with excessive force, as if she wanted to imprison him there, in her own suffering. Somewhere in her heart, she knew that this child was sweet and kind, a child who played with her and made her laugh, but she couldn't bear it. She hated him as much as she loved him. Because he wasn't hers.
"Shut up!" she yelled, letting rage consume her. "Don't cry in my presence!"
The little boy pressed his lips tightly together, stifling the sobs in his throat. His trembling body could barely stand.
"You are the traitor's son," she spat bitterly. "And he's not coming back. Listen to me well: your dad is not coming back."
She couldn't help it, back then he looked so much like the traitor, the infamous one who abandoned her, and over the years he looked even more like him. Besides, he was too kind to her even though she treated him with contempt every day, and because of that, she felt that guilt and at the same time hated him, hated him because he was strong, because he was kind, because he was the image of what she never wanted him to be.
She wished he would hate her, despise her, and tell her to her face.
For a long time, she wanted to make him unhappy just for revenge, but then it became a habit, until over time, only contempt and guilt remained, both impossible to overcome at that point, impossible to overcome without having to ask for forgiveness. Ask for forgiveness? She didn't know why she never sent him to live with his aunt and uncle. Had she only decided to keep him to hurt him? She was infamous, she told herself, especially when people found out she was a single mother and gave her encouragement, or congratulated her on her efforts; it was like a dagger twisting in her chest. She hadn't done it for that reason, but now, now that she saw him broken for the first time, she felt the enormous weight of the guilt of all those years and at the same time, as infamous as it seemed: Relief... A man had ruined her, and she had ruined the life of a child and a teenager. What if that man she had managed to raise well ended up doing the same to another woman because of her? Thinking about it was sometimes unbearable, especially when he tasted her food, when she had never cooked anything for him, not even a cup of tea, never, and since he started cooking, he hadn't failed to leave her food a single day, no matter what time she arrived, no matter if she left it all or not. Many times she thought he did all that to annoy her, to make her feel bad for not being a good mother, but she wasn't his mother and he wasn't her son, she repeated to herself again and again —"I don't have to take care of you and I don't feel guilty about anything, you are not my son, you are nothing of mine"— every time she saw him, every time guilt flooded her, every day.
Amelie took a deep breath, trying to compose herself. She wiped away the tears that had pooled on her cheeks and stepped out of the doorway when she heard that Tomás had stopped crying.
"Mother, sorry for the noise. I didn't want to wake you up," Tomás said without looking at her, chopping vegetables under the dim light of the oven.
"You didn't wake me," she replied, looking away. She approached the kitchen counter, observing his swollen face and reddened eyes. "My niece is coming tomorrow. I've already prepared the back room for her."
Tomás nodded, without stopping his movements. He didn't care too much about his cousin's arrival, although he liked her.
"Leave her some food too," Amelie added. She hated herself for how dry she sounded, but she didn't know how else to say it.
"Okay, no problem."
Amelie took a deep breath, wanting to sound more conciliatory.
"I hope you don't have problems with her. She's young and I don't want you to do anything stupid."
Tomás paused his work for an instant. He knew that this was nothing more than a reflection of the distrust she had always had towards him, but even so, her words hurt him.
"Of course, nothing to worry about," he replied, forcing a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I won't do anything to her, or to any woman."
His words were laden with contained frustration, but Amelie was unable to read between the lines.
"I hope so," she said, and then, without daring to look at him any longer, she turned towards the kitchen door. "I'm going to sleep."
Tomás nodded, continuing to chop vegetables. Amelie paused for a second at the doorway, as if she wanted to say something more, but couldn't find the words. She couldn't say "good night." She couldn't even look him in the face. So she left, leaving the room in silence, with only the dim light of the oven and the accumulated pain in every corner for company.