I kept my fingers on that seam for several seconds, afraid that moving them would somehow make it disappear.
Then I looked up at Neftalí’s photograph on the altar.
The cabin suddenly felt different. The broken chair, the cracked windows, the damp walls—those were neglect. But that straight line beneath the altar was deliberate.
I pushed against one side of the board. It barely moved.
So I picked up the iron candlestick again, slid its narrow edge carefully into the seam, and leaned my weight against it.
The wood groaned.
I stopped immediately.
For years, whenever Neftalí mentioned this place, he had talked about repairing it. I had assumed he meant fixing the roof, replacing windows, making it livable someday. Yet the one object he had personally carried here had been positioned directly above a section of floor that sounded hollow.
I tried again.
This time the board lifted just enough for cold air to move across my fingers from underneath.
My heart began pounding.
I shifted my foot to steady myself, and the rotten edge suddenly cracked beneath my weight. I stumbled backward as a section of floor gave way beside the altar, sending dust and splinters into the narrow opening.
I stared down into the dark space beneath the cabin floor.
Until that moment, I had believed my daughter-in-law had sent me there because the cabin was worthless.
Now I wasn’t so sure.
Because Neftalí had placed his altar over that exact spot long before he died—and whatever reason he had for doing it, the woman who wanted me gone had unknowingly sent me straight to it.
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