Sebastián Aguirre stood still in the kitchen doorway, the keys still clutched in his hand, as if the metal could anchor him to reality. He had just arrived, but the scene before him struck him with an unexpected force. Lucía, his four-year-old daughter, had her arms wrapped around Natalia’s neck—the young woman he himself had hired three months earlier—and was laughing, her cheeks flushed, with that pure laughter that Sebastián thought he had lost forever.

“I love you more than anyone in the world, Nati,” the little girl said, and the phrase hung in the air like a lamp turning on in a dark room.

Natalia rested her forehead against Lucía’s and smiled tenderly, a tenderness that Sebastián hadn’t seen in his daughter since Andrea died.

“I love you too, my love,” she replied softly, as if each word were a blanket.

Lucía raised her little hand and touched Natalia’s face with a delicacy that brought a lump to Sebastián’s throat. His daughter didn’t touch him like that. She didn’t look at him like that. She greeted him out of habit, out of obedience, like someone following a rule without understanding why it exists. But with Natalia… she sought her out with her whole being.

“Can you be my mom forever?” Lucía asked, seriously, as if she were asking for something simple, a cookie, a bedtime story.

The world stopped.

Natalia turned her head and saw him. Her smile vanished immediately, as if it had been suddenly extinguished.

“Mr. Aguirre…” she said, stiffly, carefully setting Lucía down. “I didn’t hear you come in. I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”

Sebastián tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. He felt something closing in on him, the air trapped in his chest. Lucía ran toward him, but without the same enthusiasm, without that sparkle. It was a flat “hello,” devoid of warmth.

“Hello, Dad.”

He raised his hand to stroke her hair, but Lucía had already turned away, returning to Natalia as if her body knew, before her mind did, where her true refuge was.

“Nati, can we keep making cookies?” the little girl asked.

“Of course, princess. Go wash your hands.”

Natalia didn’t look at Sebastián. Her eyes were fixed on the sink, her yellow gloves gleaming under the light. Her shoulders seemed tense, as if bracing for a blow.

Sebastián swallowed hard, feeling his tie like a noose.

“I… I don’t feel well,” he managed to say, his voice hoarse. “I’ll be in my study.”

And he left before he broke down right there.

He closed the study door and collapsed into his chair. His hands were sweating, his heart pounding against his ribs as if trying to escape. “I love you more than anyone in the world,” he repeated the phrase in his head, over and over, reopening a wound that had never healed.

How long had it been since his daughter had looked at him with pure love? How long since she had sought him out? Two years. Two years since Andrea had closed her eyes, and he, instead of supporting his daughter, had fallen with her into the same abyss. He had turned the apartment into an elegant, cold museum where no one touched anything, where the toys accumulated untouched, where the silence weighed more heavily than the expensive furniture.

He got up and began pacing. He tore off his tie, throwing it to the floor.

“She can be my mom forever.”

Lucía wasn’t asking for a mother because time hadn’t passed; she was asking for a mother because he hadn’t known how to fill the void. He had let the little girl drown in the same ocean of pain that consumed him. And now, a woman he barely knew, a woman with a worn handbag and calloused hands, was accomplishing in three months what he hadn’t been able to do in two years: make her laugh. Make her feel safe. Loved.