THE PHANTOM ESCAPE

IN HIDING

The house had a clock that did not work. I discovered it the first night, when I was still capable of believing the silence was on my side. It hung above the kitchen door, round, with a wood-colored plastic frame and a yellowish stain where a brand name had once been. The hands were frozen at 4:17, and the next morning they were still there, indifferent, as though time had grown tired of me too. Tomás thought it was funny.

-It's always four seventeen here.

I smiled at him. It wasn't difficult.

-Even better. That way we'll never be late for anything.

Two days later, the joke was no longer funny, even to me. The house was not the cabin from the tourism ads that people picture when they think about hiding: no picture windows, no romantic woodstove, no deck overlooking a lake. It was a low building of plastered brick and sheet metal, with a crooked porch that creaked whenever the temperature changed. Around it were fields, low trees, and a dirt road the rain turned into a ribbon of mud. We had rented it once, years before, over a long weekend. Tomás had been four and woke during the night calling for his parents. Carla had said the place was awful. What I remembered, instead, was that no one had bothered us.

That was all I needed now. For no one to bother us.

The third day dawned overcast. Tomás sat on the floor with a blanket over his shoulders, watching an old movie on an offline computer. I was warming milk in a small saucepan, the flame turned low because the right-hand burner scorched everything. By then I knew the little laws of the house: the shower took forty seconds to warm up; the bathroom door would not close unless you lifted it; the mattress in the main bedroom sagged toward the middle; the second porch board sounded like a gunshot.

I knew every noise. So when I heard the engine, I turned off the flame before I had time to think. Tomás looked up.

-What happened?

-Nothing.

I went to the window without getting too close. I had covered its lower half with a blanket. I parted the curtain just a little. The engine was approaching along the road. A car. I still could not see it. My heart rose into my throat, a dull, animal blow.

-Dad.

-Shh.

The engine went past. A white pickup appeared between the trees and continued north without slowing down. I waited until the sound had faded completely. Then I returned to the kitchen. A thin skin had formed on the surface of the milk, the kind Tomás found disgusting.

-Was it the police? he asked.

I went still. I had not told him the police might be nearby. Not in those words.

-Why would you ask that?

He shrugged.

-Because of the way you looked.

-What way?

-The way you look when you're checking if someone's coming.

I poured the milk into a mug.

-It was nobody.

He did not answer. He had started doing that: falling silent precisely where he used to keep asking questions. I noticed. I noticed everything. I had always noticed everything about him; it was almost the only part of me still standing. That morning we ate cookies with jam. Tomás asked for dulce de leche, but we had finished it the day before. I promised I would get more.

-Today?

-Later.

-When is later?

-Later is later.

-Mom says that isn't an answer.

The name remained there between us, like something slowly breaking. I set my mug on the counter. Tomás lowered his eyes.