YOU HEARD YOUR MOTHER PLOT YOUR SON’S DEATH OUTSIDE HIS BEDROOM—THEN YOUR HUSBAND FINALLY ADMITTED THE ONE SECRET THAT EXPLAINED WHY THE POISONING STARTED INSIDE YOUR OWN FAMILY

For one fleeting second, you saw the future—not clean, not guaranteed, not innocent, but real enough to reach for. Not because everything had been repaired. Because enough truth now lived in the house that nothing dangerous could pretend to be love again.

When the cake came out, Mateo closed his eyes before blowing out the candles.

Later, after the guests had gone and the yard smelled like frosting, grass, and extinguished candles, you asked him what he wished for.

He shrugged with all the swagger of a boy who had survived things he did not fully remember anymore.

“More birthdays,” he said.

You looked at Daniel then, and Daniel looked back at you, and no one in the dark pretended that sentence was ordinary.

Because that was the ending, in the end.

Not prison. Not court. Not revenge.

More birthdays.