After almost twenty minutes, the pavement changed.

After almost twenty minutes, the pavement changed.

Veronica felt it on her back before she nodded her head at it. They no longer went along familiar avenues or streets of Narvarte where the car shook due to potholes or speed bumps. Now the journey was smoother, straighter, longer. As if they had left the area where they normally moved.

He tried to breathe slowly, but the air inside the trunk was getting thicker. The heat and confinement squeezed his chest. Outside you could no longer hear so many honks or vendors, but long stretches of constant engine and, from time to time, the hum of a trailer when passing.

They didn’t go to school.

They didn’t go to the office.

They didn’t go anywhere normal.

He leaned his ear against the back seat, trying to hear better. For a while he could not distinguish anything. Then Daniel’s voice, soft, too soft.

“Don’t be nervous. Today it is going to be fixed.

There was a silence.

Then Emilia’s little voice, just a thread.

“What if my mom finds out?”

Veronica’s heart pounded so hard that she thought they were going to hear it from the seats.

Daniel replied almost immediately.

“Your mother doesn’t have to find out. This is for their good as well. When it’s all over, they’re not going to have any problems.

Veronica closed her eyes.

The “everything” sounded like a threat to him.

He thought of clandestine hospitals, of people buying children, of debts, of things that were too horrible. His body asked him to hit the trunk, scream, jump on them as soon as the car braked. But another part of her—colder, clearer—told her that she still didn’t know enough. If she got out too soon and Daniel had an explanation, she would go back to being the paranoid wife, the upset mother, the crazy woman who imagines things.

They continued to advance for almost half an hour more.

Then the car slowed down. He turned twice. He entered through a gravel surface. The sound changed. Pebbles hitting the tires. Then a slight drop. The engine went out.

Veronica stopped breathing.

He heard the doors open.

Daniel’s first.

Then Emilia’s.

“Get off slowly,” he said. Remember what we practice.

We practice.

Veronica felt dizzy.

The back door closed. Daniel walked away with Emilia. His footsteps sounded on gravel and then on something hollow, perhaps a porch of wood or sheet. A metal door creaked. Distant voices. A woman waving. Then silence.

He waited.

One.

Dos.

Five minutes.

When he heard nothing nearby, he barely pushed the trunk lid. It wasn’t fully locked, just adjusted. It opened a few centimeters and a strip of light cut through the darkness.

She went out awkwardly, her legs asleep, her dress wrinkled, her hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. As he sat up, he looked around.

He did not recognize the place.

It was an old building on the outskirts of the city, perhaps an old adapted warehouse, with high walls, a gravel patio and a faded canvas where it was read, in blue letters already half erased:

Children’s Harmony Integral Center