“I can learn.”
The younger woman tilts her head. “Do you have experience?”
You think of Bruno’s fever, Elena’s hollow knees, the empty refrigerator, and answer with the only truth you have left.
“I have children,” you say. “And I have no room in my life to quit.”
Something flickers in the older woman’s expression. Not softness exactly. Recognition, maybe. The look one survivor gives another when she spots it under the wreckage.
“What is your name?” she asks.
“Paloma.”
“Paloma what?”
“Paloma Reyes.”
She nods once. “I’m Beatrice Langley. I oversee the household. This is my assistant, Nora. The position is temporary until I find someone suitable.”
Temporary still sounds like rescue.
“Can I meet him?” you ask.
Beatrice raises one silver eyebrow. “You want to go now?”
“If the job is real, yes.”
Nora glances at Beatrice as if to say This should be entertaining. Beatrice, after one long pause, reaches into her handbag and takes out a business card heavy enough to feel expensive.
“This address,” she says. “One-thirty. If you are late, don’t bother.”
You take the card with fingers that tremble only slightly. The raised black lettering reads Zárate House, Magnolia Bluff, and beneath it an address in the wealthiest neighborhood in town.
“Thank you,” you whisper.
Beatrice’s expression remains guarded. “I haven’t hired you yet.”
“No,” you say. “But you didn’t have to give me a chance.”
For the first time, the older woman’s face shifts. Not into a smile, exactly. More like the memory of one.
When you step back out into the heat, the world looks different. Not kinder. Not safer. But open by one inch, and sometimes one inch is the difference between drowning and getting your mouth above water.
At home, you wash Bruno with cool cloths and tell your neighbor Mrs. Alvarez you have an interview. Mrs. Alvarez is sixty-seven, smells like onions and lavender, and has spent the last decade pretending not to notice which families on the floor need extra soup.
“You go,” she says, waving away your thanks. “I’ll stay with them. But if this turns out to be another one of those jobs where they want you to smile while they spit on you, you leave.”
“I’ll leave,” you promise.
She snorts. “No, you won’t. You need money. So at least promise you’ll keep your dignity, even if you lose your temper.”
You laugh in spite of yourself. “That one I can promise.”
You borrow the only decent skirt you own from a cousin down the block, pin the waist tighter, and pull your hair into a neat twist. The bus ride to Magnolia Bluff takes thirty-five minutes and feels like a trip between planets. The houses grow larger block by block, until even the trees look expensive. Iron gates, trimmed hedges, driveways wide enough to park a small church.
When the bus leaves you at the corner, you stand for a moment staring at the Zárate estate.
It is less a house than a statement.
White stone. Tall columns. Windows that catch the afternoon light like polished silver. A sweeping drive curves up to the entrance, where black SUVs sit gleaming like obedient beasts. The place does not simply say wealth. It says the kind of wealth that survives recessions, scandals, and generations of bad behavior.
A man in a dark suit opens the front door before you can knock.
“Miss Reyes?” he asks.
You nod.
He steps aside. “Ms. Langley is expecting you.”
The entry hall is cool, silent, and so large your footsteps seem inappropriate in it. Marble floors. Fresh flowers. Art that probably has insurance. You follow the man down a corridor lined with family portraits and landscapes until you reach a sunlit sitting room where Beatrice waits beside a tea tray.
“You’re on time,” she says.
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