You don’t understand the scream at first.
You only understand the way it splits the room, like someone took a knife to the air and dragged it all the way down.
You’re standing up before your mind catches up, your knees weak, your throat dry, your eyes snapping to the casket like a compass needle yanked by a magnet.
And there she is, your daughter, inside the coffin, curled against Julián’s chest like she’s trying to become part of him.
For a heartbeat, the room stops being a wake and becomes a storm.
People rush, chairs scrape, someone drops a cup, and the sound of grief turns into a kind of panic that doesn’t know where to land.
You push forward through bodies, through hands that try to hold you back “for your own good,” through your own fear that feels too big to fit inside your ribs.
All you can see is Camila’s small back and Julián’s pale face and that impossible thing.
His hand.
Resting on her like it belongs there.
Not twisted. Not fallen. Not slid.
Placed.
Someone grabs the edge of the casket and reaches for Camila’s shoulder.
Your heart jerks, because the instinct to pull her out fights the terror of disturbing whatever this is.
The abuela’s voice cuts through, low and sharp, the way it gets when she means business.
“¡Nadie la toca!” she snaps, and everyone freezes like she just fired a gun.
You swallow hard, staring at your mother-in-law like you’re meeting her again for the first time.
She steps closer, hands steady, eyes scanning Julián’s face like she’s reading something written in skin.
“You hear that,” she murmurs.
At first, you think she’s talking about the wind outside.
Then you hear it too.
Not from the storm.
From the coffin.
A sound so faint you almost convince yourself it’s imagination, the house settling, the fire crackling, anything but what your body is begging it to be.
A small rasp, a wet little pull of air, like a throat trying to remember how to work.
Your stomach drops through the floor.
“Call an ambulance,” you whisper, but your voice comes out wrong, cracked and thin.
Someone says, “He’s dead,” like repeating it makes it true enough to protect them from hope.
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