For a second, nobody moves.
Mercedes hits the tile with a sound you feel in your teeth, the rosary skittering across blue-and-white ceramic, her pearls snapping hard against her throat. One of the beads from her bracelet rolls to the foot of the fountain and vanishes into a puddle of light. Tomás rises so quickly his chair tips backward, but he does not rush to her first. He looks at the coffee cups.
Then he looks at you.
URM
That is the moment the last of your doubt dies.
Not because he says anything, not because he confesses, not because the heavens split open and hand you certainty wrapped in justice. It dies because a son seeing his mother collapse should run to her with panic in his face. Tomás stares at the table like a man whose careful arithmetic has just been ruined.
“You—” he says, and stops.
You feel the patio narrow around you.
The jasmine, the toast, the bells of Santa Ana, the pale harmless morning sun over Triana—everything turns sharp and false, like scenery painted over rot. Mercedes claws once at the air, her fingers curling toward nothing, and then Tomás drops to his knees beside her and starts shouting for help. He says her name too loudly. He calls for the maid. He yells that something is wrong with her heart.
He never asks what she drank.
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