Chapter 1
The constant noise of traffic on the street seeps into the nearly empty room and echoes off the bare walls, as if the house still doesn’t quite know how to welcome life inside. For a moment, Rebeca Noriega stands still, her hands resting on the loosely closed lid of one of the moving boxes, surveying the space that is now, in a way, entirely hers.
Beyond, among the nearby buildings along the Cantabrian coast, she can make out an irregular strip of sea. It isn’t a spectacular view, but the muted glint of the water is enough to remind her that Santander has welcomed her with open arms.
Rebeca lets out a sigh. She’s been carrying boxes upstairs for hours, organizing books, trying to transform that anonymous apartment into something that resembles a home. The kitchen already has the essentials: a coffee maker, a set of dishes, and the smell of fresh coffee that still lingers in the air after she’s had her third cup of the morning. The desk is positioned next to the living room window, exactly as she had imagined when she signed the lease. On it rests her laptop, still closed, waiting to become the center of her daily routine once everything else is in order.
She walks slowly through the living room, running her hand over the back of the sofa that arrived that very morning with the moving company. The white walls, the wooden floors,the sense of silence enveloping the entire building… It’s exactly what she was looking for. A place where no one knows her. A place to work without the past knocking on the door. A place to start over without having to explain why she needs to.
For the past few years, she has lived in a sort of permanent limbo. They haven’t been chaotic years, of course, or at least not on the surface. She’s had major assignments, demanding translations, contracts that many people would have considered enviable. Major publishers, well-known authors… Rebeca’s career has never stopped. But her life has. She has spent too much time moving from one place to another, renting apartments, settling in with the promise that it would only be temporary. Madrid, Barcelona, a brief stint in Lisbon working for a Portuguese publishing house. Always with the same sense of impermanence, as if staying were more dangerous than leaving.
Until now.
The permanent contract with the international publishing house arrived just three months ago, an opportunity she’d been waiting for years. Remote work, ongoing projects, geographical freedom. And, almost at the same time, the offer to collaborate with a small local publisher in Santander. The idea came up suddenly, almost by chance. A quiet city. Near the sea. Far from everything she’d been avoiding over the last few years.
Rebeca opens one of the boxes that are still sealed and begins to take out the books inside. They are novels in various languages, underlined essays, specialized dictionaries. She places them on the living room bookshelf, and little by little, each volume that finds its place feels like a small act of control over the chaos she feels growing in her chest.
As she does so, she tries to convince herself that she has made the right decision.
“A new beginning.”
The phrase makes her feel slightly uncomfortable. She has never been particularly fond of grandiose phrases. Life rarely reorganizes itself as neatly as the novels she has translated suggest. But even so… maybe here she can breathe. Maybe here she’ll manage to stop thinking about her disastrous personal life. Maybe the sea holds some truth in its promise of distance.
She closes another box and sits up slowly, bringing a hand to the back of her neck to relieve the tension. At that moment, the building reminds her once again how quiet it is. Barely any footsteps can be heard on the upper floors, and for the first time, she feels a great sense of relief.
She’s about to head toward the kitchen when she hears a noise on the landing, just enough to catch her attention.
“Well, there are my neighbors…” she murmurs to herself. “Maybe I should go say hello.”
Rebeca walks toward the entrance, and when she opens the door, she does so carefully, as if she were afraid of encountering the most dangerous ogre in the forest.
But what she sees is even worse.
The woman standing in front of the door to the adjacent apartment has frozen in place, the key still in her fingers. For a long, surreal moment, neither of them is able to move.
“Don’t mess with me.”
Rebeca feels the cold seep through her chest. Martina Valcárcel’s features haven’t changed as much as she would haveimagined. Her dark hair still falls over her shoulders with that natural dishevelment that always seemed deliberate, and her blue eyes remain intense even from a distance. It’s been six years since they last saw each other.
Six years.
Six years that vanish in an instant between them.
“Rebeca?” Martina’s voice breaks the silence with a disbelief she makes no attempt to hide. It’s deeper than she remembered, with that slight hoarseness that always appeared when she was nervous or surprised.
It takes a few seconds for reality to settle in Rebeca’s mind, and the images overlap with a silent intensity. Memories, conversations, glances. The taste of her lips. The warmth of her skin beneath the sheets. The way her name sounded on her lips…
Martina continues to watch her, as if she needs to confirm that what she has before her is real.
“What are you doing here?” she asks, and the question hangs between them with a naturalness that contrasts with the chaos beginning to grow inside Rebeca.
Rebeca tries to speak, but the words won’t come. Her throat feels dry, and her pulse is pounding in her temples. Martina glances slightly toward the interior of Rebeca’s apartment. The half-open door reveals several boxes stacked in the living room, the desk recently placed next to the window, the inevitable clutter of a recent move.
Her expression shifts ever so slightly.
“So you’re our new neighbor…” Martina adds, and the word “our” hangs suspended in Rebeca’s clouded mind. “Whendid you arrive?” she asks, as if this were the most normal conversation in the world.
Rebeca swallows hard. The closeness is unbearable. She can smell the perfume she’s always worn, now mingled with the salty air of the bay.
