Silence doesn’t always arrive as an absence. Sometimes it enters a house like a heavy guest, sits in the center of the living room, and forces everyone to walk around it carefully, as if a single word could break something more than just the air.
Ricardo Salvatierra learned this the early morning his world split in two.
He was returning from a business trip.
He had closed an important deal, and in the car, on the way to the mansion, he imagined María waiting for him with her way of smiling without making a sound, with that gesture of touching her hair when she was happy.
He had unread messages, missed calls… and that strange sensation, like when the body anticipates news the mind hasn’t yet accepted.
The phone rang. The family doctor’s name appeared on the screen. Ricardo answered with a “What’s wrong?” that already carried a broken voice.
“Ricardo… I’m sorry. María… had a cardiac arrest during the night. We did everything possible.”
The following words piled up in his throat like stones. He doesn’t remember how he arrived, nor at what moment the steering wheel stopped being an object and became a lifesaver.
He remembers, however, the smell of the hospital corridors, the noise of the machines, and the instant he saw María’s face and knew that silence, from that day on, would have an owner.
At the funeral, the sky seemed too clean for such tragedy. Lucía and Daniela—his seven-year-old twins—held hands, so united they seemed like a single shadow.
They didn’t cry. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t say “Mom,” not even in a whisper. They just stared into the void with eyes that seemed to have aged all at once.
The psychologists spoke of shock, traumatic grief, emotional memory.
Someone explained to Ricardo, in a professional tone that seemed almost cruel to him, that the girls had witnessed their mother’s last minutes.
That their minds, to survive, had done something strange: they had closed the door to their voices.
They returned to the mansion, and the place, which was once a home full of laughter, was turned into a museum of memories:
María’s perfume still floated in the curtains, her favorite cup remained in the kitchen, and a scarf forgotten on the coat rack seemed to look at him like a reproach.
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Ricardo knelt in front of the twins one night, when he couldn’t take it anymore.
“My loves… it’s Dad… look at me.” He searched for their eyes like someone looking for an exit in a dark room. “Say something to me… anything.”
Lucía blinked once. Daniela squeezed her sister’s hand tighter. Neither made a sound.
The following days were a procession of specialists.
Doctors from Madrid, child therapists, psychiatrists, speech therapists, neurology, tests, questionnaires,
MRIs, endless sessions. Ricardo signed everything without reading: money was the only thing he could control, and if there was something to buy to save his daughters, he would buy it.
It was then that Dr. Victoria Álvarez appeared, a prestigious neurologist and an old friend of the family. She arrived with perfect serenity: an impeccable lab coat, a thick folder, and that look that seemed to know everything before listening.
She did exhaustive evaluations. She ordered more tests. She recommended equipment.
When she finally sat across from Ricardo in the office and placed her hands on the table as if laying down a sentence, he felt like he was running out of air.
“Severe psychogenic mutism,” she said in a measured voice. “It can become permanent.”
Ricardo stared at the wall as if the word “permanent” were written there in huge letters.
“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”
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