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.

The wife.

I read the text almost without blinking.

She had left a clinic at nightfall.

He never returned home.

Her family suspected her romantic partner, but there was not enough evidence.

The police continued their investigation.

I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.

Alejandro wasn’t cheating on me with a living woman who was waiting for him to leave his wife.

No.

Alejandro had hidden from me, literally under my body, the dirty remains of a story that smelled of crime.

And then I understood where that sour smell was coming from.

It wasn’t just humidity.

It wasn’t dirt.

It was clothing that had been stored wet for weeks.

Clothes with old blood on them.

Clothes with fear.

Clothing of a missing woman.

I got up as best I could.

I had to get out of that room.

I had to call the police.