Chapter 3 - Six Girls Declare Open War
Friday arrived like a challenge.
By seven in the morning, Mariana had written a list on a whiteboard in the girls’ playroom titled OPERATION GOODBYE LUÍA, underlined twice in red marker.
Beatriz contributed “green shampoo,” Bianca suggested “fake rat,” and Sofía, after several minutes of hesitation, wrote “hide broom” because she did not want anyone actually hurt.
Laura sat on the windowsill twisting the end of her sleeve while Julia watched the hallway.
Isabela hugged her rabbit and said nothing.
Mariana looked at all of them. “Nobody gets attached.”
The words were not really about Luía.
They were about Claris.
At eight-ten, Luía arrived carrying a paper bag from a neighborhood bakery and wearing an old blue shirt she clearly did not mind ruining.
The twins were disappointed immediately.
“What’s in the bag?” Beatriz demanded.
“My breakfast.”
“You brought food into our house?”
“Yes.”
“We have a chef.”
“I don’t.”
Luía walked into the kitchen, took out a pão de queijo, and ate it while standing at the sink.
Six girls slowly appeared in the doorway.
The prank planning stopped long enough for the smell of warm cheese bread to win.
Luía noticed but pretended not to.
By nine, the fake rat had appeared in the laundry basket.
Luía picked it up by the tail, washed it with soap, and set it beside the fruit bowl with a folded napkin around its plastic neck like a tiny waiter.
The twins stared.
“You ruined it,” Bianca complained.
“I improved him.”
At ten-fifteen, Mariana changed tactics.
She told Luía the upstairs guest bathroom was clogged, then locked the door from the outside as soon as Luía stepped in.
“Have a nice weekend!” Mariana shouted through the wood.
Luía sat on the closed toilet lid and checked the time.
After three minutes, she began singing softly.
The song was old, a Brazilian lullaby about a little bird searching for home, and the sound traveled through the door.
Julia stopped in the hallway.
“That was Mom’s song,” she whispered.
Mariana’s face changed.
She unlocked the door so quickly that Luía almost laughed.
“Where did you learn that?” Mariana demanded.
“My mother sang it when I was little.”
“Our mother sang it.”
“A lot of mothers do.”
Mariana stepped closer. “Don’t sing it again.”
Luía saw the fear underneath the command. “Okay.”
The agreement unsettled Mariana more than an argument would have.
At lunchtime, Ricardo came home unexpectedly from a board meeting because his American investors in Austin had pushed a video conference to the evening.
He entered through the kitchen expecting the usual disaster and found three of his daughters sitting at the island peeling tangerines while Luía scrubbed marker from a cabinet.
He almost checked whether he had entered the wrong house.
“What happened?” he asked.
Bianca shrugged. “Nothing.”
Beatriz added, “She’s annoying.”
Luía kept scrubbing.
Ricardo noticed the fake rat serving as decoration beside the fruit bowl, and against his will, he smiled.
Mariana saw it.
Her face became ice.
“You think this is funny?” she snapped.
Ricardo’s smile disappeared. “I didn’t say that.”
“You haven’t smiled in this kitchen since Mom died.”
The accusation landed hard enough to silence everyone.
Mariana pushed back from the counter. “But she comes here three days and suddenly things are funny.”
She ran upstairs.
Ricardo started after her, but Luía spoke without turning around.
“Give her thirty seconds.”
He stopped. “Why?”
“So she can decide whether she wants you to follow.”
“That sounds like something from a textbook.”
“It sounds like something a twelve-year-old with no privacy might need.”
He bristled again at being corrected in his own home.
Still, he waited.
Twenty-eight seconds later, Mariana opened her bedroom door and shouted, “Dad!”
Ricardo looked at Luía.
She lifted one shoulder.
He went upstairs.
Mariana stood by the window with her back to him.
“You laughed,” she said.
“I did.”
“With her here.”
“Yes.”
“Did you forget Mom?”
Ricardo felt something inside him crack.
“No, meu amor.”
“Then why did it sound normal?”
He understood at last that his daughter was not angry because he had smiled.
She was terrified because the house had survived the sound.
Ricardo sat on the edge of her bed. “Maybe normal doesn’t mean we forgot her.”
Mariana turned toward him, eyes bright with tears. “It feels like betrayal.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.”
She was right.
He had his grief, but he did not have hers.
Downstairs, Luía heard voices but did not listen.
She finished the cabinet, swept under the table, and found a folded photograph taped beneath one of the chairs.
It showed Claris in a yellow dress at what looked like a Fourth of July barbecue in Miami, laughing while Mariana, then maybe five, sprayed water from a garden hose.
On the back, someone had written, MOM BEFORE THE HOSPITAL.
Luía placed it exactly where she had found it.
At two, the twins launched phase three.
They emptied a box of powdered sugar above the laundry-room door so whoever entered would be covered in white dust.
Unfortunately, Sofía walked through first.
The box fell hard against her forehead.
She screamed.
The twins froze.
Blood appeared at Sofía’s hairline.
Within seconds, Luía was kneeling beside her with a clean towel pressed gently to the cut.
Ricardo ran in from his office, saw the blood, and exploded.
“WHO DID THIS?”
Beatriz burst into tears.
Bianca backed into the wall.
Mariana immediately stepped in front of them. “It was me.”
Luía looked at her.
Ricardo pointed toward the hallway. “All of you, upstairs. Now.”
“They’re scared,” Luía said.
“They should be.”
The words came out too quickly.
Every daughter went silent.
Ricardo heard himself and looked horrified.
Luía kept pressure on Sofía’s forehead. “Fear is already running this house, Mr. Mendonza. I don’t think it needs help.”
His jaw clenched.
“I am their father.”
“Yes.”
“You do not tell me how to discipline my children.”
“No.”
“Then stop interfering.”
Luía met his eyes. “I’m trying to keep your daughter from believing her sisters wanted to hurt her.”
Sofía whispered, “They didn’t.”
Everyone looked down.
The eight-year-old was crying, but her voice was steady. “It was for Luía.”
Beatriz sobbed harder.
Bianca covered her face.
Ricardo’s anger collapsed into something heavier.
He knelt beside them. “Was that true?”
The twins nodded.
He closed his eyes.
Sofía needed three small stitches at a private clinic nearby. Ricardo took her himself, and for the first time in months, one of his daughters held his hand in public without pulling away.
When they returned, the house was strangely quiet.
Luía had not punished the twins.
She had handed them a bucket, two cloths, and the powdered-sugar disaster.
They cleaned every inch.
Mariana watched from the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell Dad I lied?”
“Because you told him with your face.”
Mariana looked away.
“You protect them,” Luía said.
“They’re my sisters.”
“You’re also their sister.”
“I’m the oldest.”
“That doesn’t make you the mother.”
Mariana’s head snapped up.
For a moment, Luía thought the girl might scream.
Instead, Mariana whispered, “Someone has to be.”
There it was.
Not rebellion.
A twelve-year-old had promoted herself into adulthood because the adults around her had fallen apart.
Luía sat on the floor beside the cleaning bucket.
“Who told you that?”
“Nobody.”
“That’s the problem.”
Mariana’s mouth trembled, but she forced it still.
Luía continued carefully. “Your sisters need you. But they need you as Mariana, not as a replacement for Claris.”
“You don’t get to say her name.”
“You’re right.”
Again, no fight.
Again, Mariana had nowhere to throw her anger.
That evening, Ricardo found the twins asleep on the playroom carpet with cleaning cloths still beside them.
He carried one to bed and woke the other by accident.
Bianca blinked at him. “Is Luía coming Monday?”
“I think so.”
“Don’t tell her we want her to.”
Ricardo paused. “Do you?”
Bianca shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.
Downstairs, he discovered Luía’s forgotten paper bag on the counter.
Inside was one remaining pão de queijo and a folded class schedule from Universidade Paulista, covered with handwritten notes.
At the top of one page she had written: Children often test permanence after loss. The question beneath the behavior is not “Can I make you angry?” but “Will you leave too?”
Ricardo read the sentence three times.
Then he looked toward the ceiling, where his daughters slept behind six separate doors.
For a year, he had thought they were driving people away.
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What if they were asking everyone the same question?
And what if thirty-seven adults had given them the answer they feared most?
