Winter had not left the valley.
Every morning, light slid over the hills with the slowness of a memory.
Frost drew strange shapes on the windows,
like sentences no one could read.
And Catarina now rose before the sun.
She made tea, watched the first embers of the fire come back to life,
and sat in the large kitchen where everything smelled of flour,
and warm wood.
Valéria was still asleep, and these silent hours had become hers.
She didn't speak, hardly thought anymore.
She listened.
Her body spoke to her in its own way, through small twinges,
dizziness, a new rhythm.
And sometimes, in the absolute calm,
she thought she could perceive something else:
a fragile, irregular beating inside her.
Not her own.
The other's.
The one she was carrying.
She had reached the point where she was no longer afraid of silence.
On the contrary, she found a kind of peace in it.
A peace different from the one she had once sought in him.
This one came from within, from a place she didn't even know she possessed.
One morning, she ventured into the old orchard behind the house.
The trees slept under a thick layer of snow,
their branches bending under the weight of the frost.
The ground crunched softly under her feet.
She stopped in front of a twisted, almost dead apple tree that she remembered seeing in bloom when she was a child.
She placed her hand on the bark.
"You're still standing," she whispered.
The wind blew softly, lifting her hair.
"Then so am I."
It had become her ritual.
Every day, she would go outside, walk a little,
observe the sleeping world.
She understood that the snow did not bury things.
It protected them.
Spring would come.
Always.
In the evening, she would write.
Not letters. Not memories.
Incomplete sentences, scattered thoughts.
Words she sometimes whispered under her breath,
not knowing if they were for the child or for herself.
"I don't know what your face will look like.
But I hope you won't have your father's eyes.
Not because they were beautiful.
But because they taught me to fear everything."
Valéria read without comment.
She contented herself with a quiet smile,
sometimes placing a hand on hers.
That was enough.
The days stretched out, similar and different.
Catarina learned to live differently.
To cook slowly.
To knit clumsily.
To be silent without the silence hurting her.
One night, she woke with a start.
The wind was blowing hard outside,
beating against the shutters like an impatient heart.
She got up, barefoot on the cold floor, and went to the window.
The snow was still falling.
But in the distance, something was changing.
A glimmer.
A promise.
She placed a hand on her belly, now more rounded.
A hesitant smile appeared on her lips.
"We'll hold on," she said simply.
Like a promise she was making to two people.
The next day, Valéria found her sitting by the fire,
a shawl over her shoulders, her gaze turned toward the flames.
"You were talking to yourself last night," said the old woman with a smile.
"I don't think I'm alone anymore," Catarina replied in a whisper.
Valéria nodded slowly.
"No. You're not. And you never will be again."
Outside, the snow began to melt, quietly.
Water slid down the roofs, drop by drop,
as if the world itself were learning to breathe again.
And in the silence of the house, Catarina closed her eyes.
She felt the world start to turn again.
Not around him.
Around her.