I thought my brother’s wife was strange for refusing to sleep anywhere but between my husband and me, until a thin strip of light appeared beneath our bedroom door—and she did something that terrified me.

By the seventh night, the anomaly had curdled into a ritual.

Every evening followed the same suffocating cadence. Dinner was served at seven in the formal dining room beneath the chandelier of clouded Bohemian crystal. Tomás would sit across from me, his eyes bruised with fatigue, his fork pushing peas and braised beef across his plate without eating more than three mouthfuls.

“You’re not eating, brother,” I said on the eighth night, watching his trembling hands.

“I’m tired, Elena,” he muttered, his voice raspy. “The light in the studio is poor. My head aches.”

“You should take more of the herbal draught Esteban brought from the city,” Esteban remarked from the head of the table. He was methodically cutting his roast, every motion precise and economical. “A nervous constitution requires discipline, Tomás. You cannot paint if your nerves are frayed.”

Tomás looked at Esteban. It was a fleeting glance, lasting no longer than the strike of a match, but the look in my brother’s eyes was not gratitude. It was a raw, naked terror that curdled my blood.

Yet, as quickly as it appeared, Tomás bowed his head. “Yes, Esteban. Thank you.”

Lucía sat beside Tomás. She wore high-collared dresses that buttoned up to her jawline, even when the tiled stove in the corner made the room sweltering. She spoke only when spoken to, answering with polite monosyllables: *Yes, sister. No, brother. The bread is very fresh, thank you.*

During the day, she was the ideal houseguest. She scrubbed the washboards until her knuckles bled; she pressed the linen with heavy flatirons, filling the kitchen with the clean, starchy scent of hot cloth; she dusted the portraits of our severe ancestors with meticulous care. There was no complaint in her, no arrogance.

And then the grandfather clock in the vestibule would strike eleven.

The household would retire. The lamps would be snuffed one by one, leaving only the blue moonlight spilling through the arched hallway windows.

And like a specter summoned by an unholy chime, the floorboards outside my bedroom would groan.

*Creak. Step. Creak.*

The sound of her coarse wool blanket dragging along the turned spindles of the balustrade had become a psychological torment.

On the tenth night, when the latch lifted, I met her at the threshold before she could cross it.

“No, Lucía,” I said firmly, keeping my voice low so as not to wake the whole wing. “This has gone far enough. You are a grown woman. If you cannot sleep with Tomás, I will make up the bed in our mother’s old room across the corridor. But you cannot sleep between my husband and me.”

Lucía stood under the dim amber glow of the hallway sconce. In the low light, the shadows under her cheekbones looked like deep, violet bruises. Her fingers gripped her feather pillow so violently that the seams strained.

“Not the mother’s room,” she whispered, her lips scarcely parting.

“Why not?” I demanded, irritation finally breaking through my patience. “It has a fireplace. It has fresh down pillows. Why must you wedge yourself between us night after night?”

“I snore,” she said, her voice trembling. “I make sounds in my sleep. I will disturb the house.”

“You are disturbing *me*, Lucía!” I hissed. “You are disturbing this marriage! Do you have any idea how unnatural this is? In the village, Mrs. Gable saw you crossing the landing three nights ago through the uncurtained window. People are talking. They think you are mad, or they think—”

I stopped myself before I said the word *seductress*.

Because that was the poison that had begun to seep into my veins during the sleepless hours of the night.

Was she playing a game? Was this mountain girl, with her downcast eyes and fraying hems, attempting to insinuate herself into Esteban’s bed under the guise of childish innocence? Men were susceptible to wounded creatures. And Esteban was a man of power, wealth, and position—everything Tomás was not.

Lucía looked down at my throat, then slowly raised her eyes to mine. There were no tears in them. There was only a profound, bottomless exhaustion.

“If I sleep in that room,” she whispered, so low I had to lean forward to catch the words, “I will not wake up.”

A shiver raced down my spine. “What does that mean?”

Before she could answer, Esteban appeared behind me. He placed his warm, heavy hands on my shoulders. His touch was firm, authoritative, rooting me to the spot.

“Elena,” he murmured against my ear, his breath smelling faintly of peppermint and pipe tobacco. “Hush now. Don't interrogate the poor girl. Look at her—she can barely stand.”

“Esteban, please,” I pleaded, turning my head to look into his handsome, impassive face. “Listen to what she’s saying. This isn't grief. This isn't homesickness. Something is wrong.”

“Of course something is wrong,” Esteban said, smiling with infinite indulgence. “She is a sensitive girl who has married an unstable boy. Tomás is erratic. We both know how he gets when his winter melancholia sets in. He screams in his sleep, he throws his brushes. Would you force this child to endure that every night?”

I hesitated. It was true that Tomás had night terrors. In our childhood, our mother often had to sit by his bed until dawn to stop him from clawing at his own throat.

“I... I suppose,” I stammered, feeling the ground slip beneath my feet as it always did when Esteban applied his iron logic.

“Come inside, Lucía,” Esteban directed gently, gesturing past my shoulder. “Take your place. Pay no mind to Elena; she is tired from the garden work.”

Lucía slipped past me like an eel, her muslin nightgown brushing against my skirt.

She climbed onto the mattress. She placed her pillow squarely between our two pillows. She pulled her coarse blanket up to her chin, lay flat on her back, and closed her eyes.

I stood by the doorway, looking at the bed.

The mattress was immense, an empire bed carved from dark Spanish mahogany, yet it looked entirely consumed by the strange geometry of our three bodies.

Esteban on the right, nearest the window.

Me on the left, nearest the door.

And Lucía, the wedge driven between husband and wife, rigid as a corpse laid out for viewing.

When I finally blew out the lamp and lay down, the bed felt different. The air was charged, thick with an unspoken current that made the hairs on my forearms stand on end.

I turned my back to Lucía, curling onto my side.

Behind me, I heard her shift.

She did not turn toward Esteban. She turned toward me.

Through the thin cotton of my nightdress, I felt the faint, rhythmic touch of her knee against the back of my thigh. She was shaking. A continuous, microscopic tremor that never stopped, like a telegraph wire humming in the high mountain wind.

*Why are you shaking?* I wanted to scream into the dark. *If you are trying to steal my husband, why do you shrink from him like he is fire?*