1

  Days later, Greta's consciousness came and went. Sometimes she saw her mother in the armchair beside the bed. Other times, some other relative. There were days when she found the kind face of a nurse asking if she was all right. She couldn't answer: she would slip back into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  One morning, she managed to make out another familiar face settled in the armchair. The detective was wearing a tracksuit. Behind his reading glasses, he was writing something propped on his knee, under the soft light of a lamp in the corner of the white-walled room.

  "Inácio?"

  He looked as though he'd received an electric shock, nearly dropping the magazine before answering.

  "Oh, yes. It's me. Welcome back, young lady! You're just in time. Help me with this one, professor: 'Costa,' in English, five letters."

  Greta tried to sit up in bed without success. Her back weighed a ton, which brought the crossword answer straight to the tip of her tongue.

  "Coast."

  "Let's see..." He wrote the answer on the page, studying the little squares for a moment. "Fits perfectly. Would you like some water?"

  She nodded. Setting the magazine aside, he picked up a bottle of mineral water and poured a plastic cup, which he carried to the bedside.

  2

  Inácio came back in the following days. He relayed events little by little. It was with visible discomfort that he revealed Valério's situation: still missing. The visitor had no idea this was a relief to her. As far as Greta was concerned, her husband could stay missing forever.

  Inácio believed Pablo had aimed for her lung, anticipating a collapse and a painful death as she struggled to draw breath. Struck by Daros's gunfire, he had only managed to hit the side of her abdomen. The bullet had exited centimeters from her floating ribs. By the skin of her teeth, according to Inácio, she had avoided paralysis.

  "That's why everything feels unbearable to you right now," he concluded. "Because it literally hurts to breathe."

  Greta learned that Inácio's wife had also paid a few visits. She was a judge.

  "Lurdes said your mother has her daughter's beauty. Or the other way around, since she came first. And her courage too. She said your mother is terrified of losing you, but held herself together as best she could. She's a remarkable woman."

  Inácio then spoke of the official investigations into the abuses at the university. Lurdes was doing what she could to follow the proceedings, but it wasn't quite her role. The dean was a fugitive. Some witnesses had reported seeing someone resembling him along the beaches of the Northeast, with the investigations consistently leading nowhere. There were officers in the hospital corridor in case he tried anything. When the couple had news, they would share it with her.

  Then the detective fell silent, considering the update closed. He still hadn't managed to put the scene at the professor's house behind him, and he wouldn't speak of it with the patient. It had been a bloodbath. What shocked him wasn't even the number of dead, but the number of police officers involved. Some naive rookies, yes, but most were seasoned veterans. His wife had once said something that had deeply irritated him. Lurdes had said that the longer a police officer remained on active duty, the greater the chance of becoming as dangerous as the enemies they fought. Her conclusion no longer sounded irritating to him. Looking back, it was tragic.

  The whole thing led Inácio to consider, for the first time in decades, whether it wasn't already time to retire. After all, the incident had begun to quietly erode the trust he felt in his colleagues.

  The account of events wasn't complete for Greta. The most important part was still missing.

  "And Daros?"

  With a reluctant grimace, Inácio raised a hand in the air, the gesture indicating he was as lost as she was.

  "Vanished. Disappeared into the world. It's what he always does after a mission. Before that, though, he asked for your house key. He wanted to have a look around, maybe find clues to track down the professor, I don't know. I handed it over. I thought it was fine, T thought that you wouldn't mind."

  Greta said nothing. But it wasn't fine. She did mind.

  More than once, Inácio had thought about asking Greta what had actually happened between her and Daros. Not so much the relationship itself, since the emotional involvement between the two had become more obvious than the nose on one's face during the confrontation with the dean's men. No, he wanted to know what had driven them apart afterward. Maturity, however, had taught him a lesson. You don't ask about what someone hasn't said. If the person wanted to reveal it, they would have done so already.

  3

  Discharge was only a matter of time now. Greta was already doing everything on her own. She was occasionally even given permission to go down to the hospital canteen, near the visitors' entrance. That's where she was now, waiting with Inácio for the coffee and slice of cake she had ordered.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The man was chattering about the small farm he had in Torres. It would be a good place for her to stay while she recovered. It was safe too. Greta shook her head. She explained she wanted to go back to teaching to keep her mind occupied. Inácio didn't even try to hide how much he disapproved of the idea.

  "I'm not sure it's safe, Greta. The dean is a fugitive, fine. But the investigation is ongoing. It's unlikely, but he could have an accomplice among the staff or even among the students."

  A waitress arrived at the table carrying a tray with Inácio's order. She distributed the plates across the table. When she set the portion of salad down, Inácio wrinkled his nose. He thanked the young woman and continued:

  "I think you should keep your distance from the university. Just as a precaution. Maybe HR can arrange some remote work for you. Torres is practically next door. Lurdes and I can come by every weekend. I can even lend you Lenin. And that's not an honor I extend to just anyone."

  "It would be wonderful to have him for a while."

  "Have him is a very strong choice of words. Careful now. I wouldn't use it if I were you."

  The feigned fit of jealousy drew a brief smile from her. Not long after, her thoughts drifted back to everything that had happened. When another server arrived with her order, Greta tried to sort through the questions still clouding her mind. She wanted to understand everything.

  "How is the driver?"

  The detective wiped his mouth with a napkin and broke into a satisfied smile.

  "Fernando is doing great. The wound healed before the rooster crowed. He's already been discharged and went home to keep his legs up. Literally — he's on crutches, cast and all."

  Inácio and Lurdes had worked hard to clear the young man's name. Fernando may have started the story on the wrong foot, but his character had shown when he knew the time to stop and honor the uniform he wore. With all that free time, the young man had committed to studying for the civil police entrance exam. The detective had promised to help him prepare.

  "I am glad to hear that. Fernando is a good person."

  Greta paused to cut a small piece of the Marta Rocha cake. She usually started eating with the part she liked least, the meringue. Then she turned to the next question.

  "Who died in Daros's place at the cabin?"

  "A police officer."

  "A police officer? What was he doing there?"

  "Nobody knows exactly. You can only speculate. Everything points to the deceased having been involved with a lady from the area."

  The woman had testified that she couldn't end the relationship no matter what: the man would turn violent. He had hit her son a few times, something she only discovered when the boy gave his account. The son, nine years old, had mentioned receiving a cap from a stranger who had helped him on the beach.

  "So," Inácio continued, "the boy's stepfather took the cap from him. Now God only knows what the man was doing at the cabin wearing that damn cap. My guess is the stranger was Daros. The rest is a mystery, isn't it? Dead men tell no tales.".

  Greta raised the cup to her lips without saying anything. She didn't seem to taste the drink.

  "Hey, don't be sad like that. The guy was a rotten apple. People like that end up falling from the branch, sooner or later."

  She nodded. But her thoughts had flown far away. Inácio recognized that absent expression. He had seen thousands of trauma victims with that same lost gaze fixed on nothing, as though the thread of their existence had been yanked from the socket.

  That's why he knew that if she went back to teaching, the professor would soon discover that was no longer her life. After such a long cycle of violence and loss, no one goes back to being who they were. He kept the thought to himself. There are truths that each person must learn alone, in their own way and in their own time.

  4

  Three months later, Inácio and Lurdes finally managed to take a holiday. They had packed their bags for the farm in Torres, and Lenin was marching enthusiastically back and forth between the house and the car, eager for the trip.

  Inácio arranged the last piece of luggage in the boot and slammed the lid shut. It wasn't long before his wife arrived, leading the doodle by the leash to one of the back doors. She disappeared inside the vehicle while she buckled the animal into the seatbelt.

  He walked around the car and settled behind the wheel. When his wife got in, he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

  "All set?" he asked.

  "I think so. Did we forget anything?"

  "Probably. We're getting old," Inácio teased.

  "Speak for yourself. I'm a trim silver fox," the judge shot back, tossing a strand of hair over her shoulder in mock vanity. "Or at least that's what they say down at the courthouse."

  The feeling of being on their way to the beach should have been relaxing. Days in Torres were always happy ones. When there weren't many people around, the two of them would let Lenin loose on Guarita beach. Getting the sand out of his long black coat was a chore, but the spectacle of watching the dog run wild always made it worthwhile. A heavy cloud hung over them, however. The investigation into the dean's case had been closed.

  None of the students had chosen to file a complaint. Some had even denied that harassment or abuse had taken place. In cases like that, it was common for women to feel humiliated by their role as victims. They came to see themselves as weak and to blame themselves for what they had suffered. The last thing they wanted was exposure and further ridicule.

  The dean had been permanently removed from the university, but there wasn't even an administrative hearing. As infuriating as it was, the outcome had still been better than the statistics for similar cases. Over the last ten years, only six percent of professors accused of sexual harassment in the country had been dismissed.

  Inácio believed the time had come when hatred of women had been institutionalized. Harassing them was no problem. It wasn't considered a problem that every seventeen hours another woman met her death at the hands of the partner she had once dreamed of growing old with. A partner who chose not to honor his companion, let alone protect her from himself.

  Greta had received the news from Lurdes with apathy. She no longer expected much from the system. In fact, she didn't seem to expect anything from anything anymore. All the courage that had sustained her through the nightmare seemed to have been left behind, as though it had been torn from her along with her last scream. What remained was an empty shell, eyes that lit up less and less.

  The last they had heard, Daros Fischer was supposedly on holiday in the Northeast. Inácio hadn't believed that story for half a minute, but the years had taught him not to ask too many questions about his friend. He wouldn't like the answers, in any case. Daros had asked whether Greta had shown any interest in seeing him again. Inácio couldn't bring himself to lie. So there was no way to say yes.

  The couple would be meeting the professor at the farm. She had declined to stay on their property. She had explained that she would be staying at her family's beach house, on the shores of Lagoa do Viol?o. She added that she could wait for them at the farm, that she could open the house up for them in advance and let it air out.

  Lurdes had passed along instructions about where to find the spare key. She asked Greta to make herself at home in the meantime: the pool was waiting for her.