Chapter 1: The Woman in the Middle

Every night, my brother’s new wife dragged her pillow into my room and slept between my husband and me.

Not on the couch. Not on the floor. Not in the guest room.

Right in the middle of our bed.

At first, I told myself it was temporary. My younger brother Tomás had just moved into our house with his new wife, Lucía, and families sometimes go through strange adjustments.

So the first few nights, I forced a smile.

“Sleep wherever you want,” I told her. “It’s fine.”

But it was not fine.

Because each night, Lucía appeared at our bedroom door carrying a blanket and pillow, her eyes swollen like she had been crying. Then she would climb into the space between Esteban and me with eerie precision, lie perfectly still, and stare into the darkness.

As if she was not sleeping.

Chapter 2: In the Middle It’s Warmer

By the fifth night, I could not hold my tongue anymore.

“Why do you always have to sleep in the middle?” I asked.

Lucía froze with her pillow in her hands. Her face tightened, and for a moment I thought she might cry.

“In the middle it’s warmer, sister,” she said softly. “In my village, when a woman first comes to live in her husband’s family home, she gets scared at night. Sleeping between family keeps the bad dreams away.”

It was a strange answer. Too soft. Too rehearsed. Too sad.

I wanted to be kind, but resentment had already started twisting inside me.

By the tenth night, even the neighbors were whispering that something felt wrong in our house.

Every evening, the sound of Lucía’s blanket brushing against the stair railing announced her trip upstairs like a ritual none of us had agreed to