It seeped into the room the way dampness creeps into walls—quietly, patiently, until one day it is everywhere and you can no longer remember what the air used to feel like before it changed.

And she lay down beside me every night while I breathed in the scent of another dead woman.

Then the sound of a siren was heard in the distance.

Very weak.

But real.

Alejandro heard it too.

He turned his head for barely a second.

And at that moment I knew that everything was about to break down once and for all.

Because when he looked at me again, there was no explanation in his eyes.

There was a decision.

And he took another step towards me.