Chapter 9
Sunday moves slowly, with that somewhat deceptive calm of days when the city seems to suspend its usual rhythm.
It’s almost lunchtime when Rebeca Noriega finishes setting up the folding ladder she’s placed against the living room wall.
The apartment still retains the slight disorder of a recent move: a few open boxes next to the bookshelf, a couple of books stacked on the coffee table, and a lamp that is still waiting to find its permanent home.
From the kitchen comes the aroma of coffee brewed a while ago, now cooling, forgotten on the countertop.
Rebeca holds the hammer in one hand as she adjusts the frame she has just hung. She tilts her head slightly to one side to check if it’s straight, frowns, and gives the nail one more little tap.
“A little to the left,” says her mother’s voice from the laptop resting on the dining room table.
Rebeca sighs with a resigned smile.
“Mom, you’re two hundred kilometers away. I don’t think you have the best angle to judge.”
“Mothers always have the best angle,” she replies without hesitation. “Even if it’s just through telepathy.”
On the computer screen appear the three familiar faces watching the scene as if they were sitting in the same living room.
Her mother, with that tender expression; her father, leaning slightly toward the camera, holding a cup of coffee; and her brother Roberto, who seems to be half-reclining on the sofa in the family home, with his cell phone in his hand.
Rebeca carefully descends the ladder and takes a couple of steps back, placing her hands on her hips as she looks at the picture.
Inside the frame, protected behind the glass, are two printed pages from the first novel she translated when she was just starting out in the publishing world.
It’s not a particularly valuable edition, but it holds deep meaning for her.
It represents the beginning of something that, over the years, has come to define her professional life.
“Now it’s straight,” her father declares in a calm tone.
“Thank goodness,” Rebeca murmurs.
“It’s a shame you couldn’t take those couple of days off,” her mother says then, with that slightly accusatory tone that always comes out when she feels her children don’t visit her often enough. “We would have loved to have you here. I would have made you fabada and everything.”
Rebeca turns toward the table, resting one hand on the back of her chair.
“Mom, I just moved. And you already want me to come see you?”
“Is it my fault that I miss my daughter?” her mother retorts, with that feigned offense she always pulls off so perfectly. “Besides, your room is still just the way you left it. I even left that awful blanket you like so much.”
Rebeca lets out a laugh.
“The blanket isn’t horrible. It’s warm, and I’m almost forty. You should donate it.”
“Even if it’s plaid and smells like mothballs, I’m not going to do it. It’s still your blanket,” her mother protests.
Rebeca walks over to the laptop and leans with her arms crossed on the edge of the table.
For a moment, she allows herself to watch them in silence.
There’s something comforting about the scene.
That Sunday routine, the conversation, the familiar tone.
Over the past few years, while she’d been living in another city, those video calls had been a kind of anchor to the world where she’d always felt safe—a reminder that no matter what happened, there was a place to return to.
“And how are you handling everything else?” Roberto asks suddenly, finally looking up.
Rebeca knows all too well the nuance hidden behind those words, and she doesn’t need to ask what he means.
Luckily, she isn’t looking directly at the camera at that moment.
She turns around and looks back at the picture she’s just hung. She takes a step back, then another, assessing the composition of the wall as if the question had never been asked, her hands resting on her hips.
The silence stretches on for a few seconds.
“Rebeca?” her mother insists.
She lets out a soft sigh before finally turning toward the computer.
“It’s going as it should,” Rebeca replies, shrugging. “It’s not easy, but I suppose I’ll get used to it.” She pauses briefly. “What I can’t quite get used to is that she’s married to Julia.”
The sentence hangs in the air as if it were part of a typical Sunday conversation, something that could be mentioned with the same lightness as the weather or the week’s news. But it isn’t.
On the screen, her mother purses her lips slightly.
“Yeah…” she replies cautiously. “We were surprised too when the family told us. It was… unexpected.”
Rebeca doesn’t respond. She simply leans her weight against the table as she waits.
“Those two don’t go together at all,” her mother adds, with brutal honesty.
“For God’s sake, honey,” Rebeca’s father interjects. “Don’t talk like that.”
“It’s the truth,” the woman insists, shrugging her shoulders in an almost defiant gesture. “Rebeca has always been the perfect match for Martina. Always.”
The silence that follows is immediate.
Rebeca feels something tighten inside her, a kind of discomfort that pierces her chest as if someone were pricking her with a needle. Her mother’s words echo in her head.
For a few seconds, no one says a word. Not even Roberto, who usually has a comment ready to ease the tension.
Rebeca looks away toward the living room window. The sky, which just an hour ago was covered by a uniform layer of clouds, begins to darken rapidly.
Then the doorbell rings, and the sound feels almost providential.
“It’s the pizza I ordered for lunch,” Rebeca says, taking advantage of the interruption.
“Junk food again?” her mother protests immediately.
“She probably didn’t have time to cook, and not everyone can drive over to eat your stews,” Roberto interjects with a crooked smile. “Leave her alone, Mom.”
Rebeca is already walking toward the door.
When she returns a few seconds later with the pizza boxes stacked in her arms, the tension has eased slightly.
“Well,” she says as she sets the boxes on the table. “I’m going to be on my way now.”
Her father raises a hand in a wave goodbye.
“Take care.”
“I promise I’ll be back in a couple of weeks,” Rebeca adds.
“You’d better,” her mother replies with a smile that tries to hide her emotion. “And bring that friend of yours from work. Well, if you want to, of course.”
Rebeca feels a lump in her throat but hides it with a brief laugh.
“We’ll see.”
The call ends and the living room falls silent.
For a moment, Rebeca stares at the black screen of her laptop, as if she were expecting the conversation to continue in some invisible way.
Then she opens one of the pizza boxes. The warm aroma of melted cheese and tomato fills the air with a comforting immediacy.
She serves herself a slice, opens the can of soda that came in the bag, and sinks onto the couch.
She turns on the TV without paying much attention to the program on the screen. Because her mind immediately wanders back to the phrase her mother had said just minutes earlier.
“Rebeca has always been the perfect match for Martina.”
She takes a bite of the pizza while letting out a small, humorless laugh.
“Yeah, right…” she mutters to herself. “Just look at who she ended up with.”
If she’s learned anything in recent years, it’s that stories that seem perfect from the outside can crumble with surprising ease.
Even so, the memory of Martina pops into her mind with the same intensity as always.
The way she saw her during dinner. The way their eyes met several times, as if neither of them knew exactly how to behave after so long.
The slight tremor in Martina’s voice when she said she felt the situation was awkward.
The way her eyes lingered on her lips for a second too long…
Rebeca takes another sip of soda. The sound of the wind beating against the windows makes her look up. In a matter of minutes, the sky has changed completely. Clouds swirl over the city with a dark density, and the first gust of rain hits the glass hard.
The storm arrives with almost theatrical speed.
The raindrops begin to fall heavily, pitter-pattering against the windowsill as the sky briefly lights up with a distant flash of lightning.
Rebeca watches the scene from the sofa.
“So it really was true.”
She had been warned several times about the unpredictable weather on the coast, but seeing it unfold like this, so suddenly, has something fascinating about it that leaves her completely mesmerized.
For a few minutes, she simply watches the rain fall.
The constant sound of the drops against the glass creates a sort of sound bubble around the living room.
The storm turns the space into something intimate, cozy, almost welcoming.
Rebeca leans back against the sofa and lets out a slow sigh.
The pizza is good. The rain is perfect. And, against all odds, she begins to feel that perhaps choosing Santander as her new—and, she hopes, final—adventure wasn’t a mistake.
Her phone vibrates on the coffee table, and Rebeca reaches out to pick it up. Bruno’s message on the screen makes her smile.
“Are you feeling better yet?”
The question is enough to bring a faint smile to her lips. Bruno has that strange ability to sense when someone needs a little gesture of companionship, although she feels a slight pang of sadness knowing they won’t be able to see each other like they used to.
Rebeca rests the phone on her knee as she thinks about how to reply.
She looks back at the window. The rain continues to fall heavily.
For a moment, the image of Martina pops into her mind again.
The faint blush that rose up her neck when Rebeca told her she liked how she talked about her work.
That blush she remembered perfectly from other nights, from other conversations that ended in slow kisses and their bodies seeking each other out of need.
Rebeca looks down at the phone and her fingers finally move across the screen.
“Yes. Much better. I think I’m slowly getting used to living here.”
She presses send.
She sets her phone on the table and leans back on the sofa as the sound of the storm continues to fill the room.
For the first time since she arrived, the apartment is starting to really feel like home.
And, even though there are still too many unresolved issues, Rebeca can’t help but think that perhaps this city holds more answers than she imagined.
The rain beats harder against the windows, thunder rumbles in the distance, and in the silence between one clap and the next, Rebeca closes her eyes for a moment.
She feels the rapid beating of her own heart, the echo of a gaze that hasn’t stopped haunting her since she arrived, and the certainty—equally unsettling and sweet—that Martina Valcárcel is still, after all, the only person capable of making her feel so alive and so lost at the same time.
Her phone vibrates again.
“I’m glad. If you need to vent, you know where to find me. And if not, you know where to find me anyway. But don’t stay alone with that inner storm, okay?”
Rebeca smiles and types a quick reply.
“I’m not alone. I’ve got pizza, a real storm, and too many memories. I’ll survive.”
She sends the message and turns off the TV. The living room is left in semi-darkness, lit only by the occasional flashes of lightning streaking across the sky. She gets up, walks to the window, and stands there watching what lies beyond the glass.
The city fades behind the curtain of rain. And, for the first time in a long time, Rebeca feels that the knot she’s carried in her chest for years is slowly beginning to give way to other kinds of feelings.
She doesn’t know if that’s good or bad.
She only knows that she no longer wants to keep running away.
And that, perhaps, the next time she runs into Martina on the landing, she won’t close the door so quickly. A next time that arrives just a few seconds later.