“By letting her rot in an abandoned house?” Mariana Flores stepped forward, her voice trembling but sharp as a scalpel. She slammed her binder shut. “Your fear doesn’t absolve you, Mr. García. Because you hid from the world, we didn’t know she was drowning. Now, the law will handle you. But right now, we need to know exactly what she was exposed to. What did she eat? Where did she play? What happened in that house?”
Esteban looked up, his eyes bloodshot, wide with a sudden, primal terror. “The house… we shouldn’t have stayed there. But it was free. No rent. No papers.” He grabbed Tomás’s jacket sleeve, his grip desperate. “Officer, listen to me. There’s something wrong with that place. At night, the pipes don’t just rust—they breathe. Lili used to talk to the walls. I thought it was just an imaginary friend. I thought she was lonely because of her mother.”
