The door opened slowly.

Carlos did not appear first.

A girl of about nine appeared, very thin, with her hair half-tied up and wearing an oversized t-shirt. She carried a sleeping baby in her arms with a dexterity beyond her years. Behind her, another child appeared, perhaps six years old, with enormous eyes and a spoon in his hand, as if he had been snatched from the kitchen.

The girl looked at Laura suspiciously.

—Are you looking for my dad?

The word threw her off.

Dad.

Not “my brother”, not “Mr. Carlos”, not “my uncle”.

—I’m looking for Carlos Rodríguez— Laura said, regaining her firm tone. —I’m his boss.

The girl hesitated for a second. Then she opened the door a little wider.

—He’s inside. My dad is with my grandma.

Laura entered cautiously.

And his world came crashing down.

The house smelled of medicine, reheated soup, and musty dampness. The living room barely held a sagging sofa, a plastic table, and a small television with a cracked screen in one corner. Folded diapers lay on a chair. On the floor, an open school backpack stood next to notebooks filled with children’s drawings. It wasn’t the mess of laziness. It was the mess of survival.

At the back, in a room separated by a flowered curtain, she saw Carlos.

He was kneeling beside a makeshift hospital bed. He was supporting an elderly woman’s head, giving her water with an oral syringe. His shirt was sweaty, his face weary, and his hands held such tenderness that Laura, for a moment, didn’t recognize him. To one side, an old oxygen machine hummed irregularly.

Carlos looked up.

When he saw her, he turned pale.

—Mrs. Mendoza…

Her first reaction wasn’t shame. It was fear.

Fear of losing my job.

Fear that that elegant woman, standing on the threshold with her expensive heels sinking into the cement floor, would come to finish dismantling what little still remained in that house.