Gaspar refused to go into the room: as he stood motionless in the doorway, his eyes shone and he seemed scared.

“Daddy, there’s a lady in the room,” he said. Juan blinked and attuned his senses: it was the same woman from the hallway earlier.

“Don’t look at her.” He took Gaspar’s face in both his hands; they were so big they nearly encircled the boy’s head. “Just look at me.”

Then he sat on the floor and turned on the bedside lamp. Luckily Gaspar couldn’t hear what the woman was saying. It was always better to only see. Juan listened for a moment out of curiosity. It was the same desperate and solitary repetition of death, the same echoing of death. Then he went deaf to her but didn’t expel her; his son would have to learn how to do that, and fast. Juan didn’t want him to be afraid a single minute longer.

“Listen to me closely now.”

“Who is it, Daddy?”

“It’s not a person. It’s a memory.”

He rested a hand under his son’s sternum and felt his heart, fast, strong, and healthy. His mouth went dry with envy.

“Close your eyes. Feel my hand?”

“Yeah.”

“What am I touching?”

“My belly.”

“And now?”

With two fingers of his other hand, he found the vertebra behind the boy’s stomach.

“My back.”

“No, not your back.”

“My spine.”

“Now you have to think about what’s between my two hands, like when your head hurts and you tell me it feels like there’s something in it. Okay, think about what’s in here.”

Gaspar squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lower lip.

“Got it.”

“Okay, now tell the lady to go away. Don’t tell her out loud. You can say it in a quiet voice if you want, but tell her as if this part of you that’s between my hands could speak. Understand? It’s important.”

This could take all night, Juan knew.

“I told her.”

Juan looked at the woman, who remained beside the bed, pregnant and open-mouthed, surely still talking about her first child, her eyes empty.

“Again. As if you were talking from here, as if you had a mouth inside.”

“Should I say it loud?”

Where did he get that question? The boy deserved an answer worthy of such a pertinent query.

“Yes, today you should.”

The image of the woman vanished slowly, like dissipating smoke. The air in the room seemed cleaner, as though they had opened the windows. The light from the lamp shone brighter.

“Very good, Gaspar, very good.”

Gaspar looked around the room in search of the woman who had gone. He looked serious.

“And she won’t come back?”

“If she does, you do the same thing you just did.”