At ten to eight, the rain had not yet decided whether to fall. It hung in the air above Santiago’s rooftops, fine enough to dull the windows without forming drops, and Inés had opened the kitchen window because her father was toasting bread as if he meant to smoke someone out.
“You could turn it down,” she said.
Xoán Varela flipped the slices with two fingers.
“I could. But then it would be less toasted.”
The Casa do Freixo was not quite awake yet. On the floor below, a bed’s springs protested, then a shower door closed. On the landing, a backpack slumped against the wall with the tired-animal sound of an overloaded bag. In the family kitchen above the inn’s guest rooms, Inés had emptied a box of drilled scallop shells onto the table. Some were clean; others still held a rim of dirt in their ridges. Pilgrims forgot them, abandoned them, traded them for prettier ones. Xoán refused to let anyone throw them away.
“It’s already brought someone this far,” he would say.
That morning, Inés was tying them to short pieces of string to label the twelve new lockers in the back dormitory. She wrote the numbers in a small black notebook, the one where she recorded expenses she later forgot to enter in the spreadsheet. Shell, knot, number. Shell, knot, number. The task kept her fingers busy enough to stop her from opening the folder beside the fruit bowl.
Mara arrived at three minutes past eight. Inés noticed the time on the oven clock, because her sister had asked for eight and would certainly expect someone to acknowledge that she had driven two hours to get there on time.
She came in without kissing anyone, shook her umbrella into the sink, and set her bag on the chair holding the papers.
“Did you read them?”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. Did you read them?”
Xoán set a third cup on the table.
“Coffee before acts of war.”
“It’s not a war, Dad.”
End of excerpt. Discover the other stories in this universe.