Katrina

Chapter Nine - Story B

The House That Grief Changed

The first sound was Susan’s scream.

The second was Rafael calling for help. “Somebody get the car!” he shouted, scooping Isabella into his arms. “Now!”

Susan stumbled forward, her hands shaking as she clawed at the air. “Give her to me. Rafael, please, give her to me!”

“Let me hold her, Susan. Let me hold her.”

Blood stained the front of his shirt. Isabella lay unnaturally heavy and still against his chest, her tiny face ashen, her little body frighteningly quiet. Rafael had held all his children a thousand times—rocking them to sleep, kissing bumped knees, holding them when they ran fevers. He had never imagined holding one while silently screaming a frantic prayer to a God he wasn’t sure was listening.

“Isabella, *mi vida*,” Susan sobbed, pressing frantic fingers to her daughter’s cold cheek. “Mama’s here. Open your eyes, baby. Please.”

Nothing.

Katrina stood frozen beside the changing table, her small fingers gripping the edges of the bloodstained shawl. Her lower lip wobbled violently. “Mama?”

Susan didn't even look down.

“Mama, I tried,” Katrina whispered.

The words were barely a puff of air, but Rafael caught them. He glanced back at his three-year-old, her face smeared with tears. “I know, sweetheart,” he forced out, his voice cracking. “I know you tried.”

He wanted to drop everything and scoop her up, to offer the safety he always did. But Isabella needed him, and every ticking second felt like sand slipping through his fingers. “Get the car!” he roared toward the doorway.

Footsteps thundered down the hall. A housekeeper appeared, took one look at the blood and the gray tint of the baby's skin, and bolted to carry out the order. Gabriel appeared a second later, his five-year-old face puckering with distress.

“What happened to Isabella?”

Nobody answered. Sebastian and Camila drifted out behind him, rubbing sleep from their eyes, expecting a normal morning in a house that had always felt invincible. Instead, they found their mother on her knees weeping uncontrollably and their father holding their baby sister like she was made of glass.

“Papa?” Sebastian asked, his voice shaking.

Rafael forced himself to look at them. “Go with the housekeeper. Stay together. We have to take Isabella to the hospital.”

“But what’s wrong with her?” Gabriel pressed.

“Please, Gabriel.” Rafael swallowed a knot of jagged glass. “Do as I say.”

The boy went silent. Rafael turned and ran, Susan hot on his heels, nearly tripping over his shoes.

Katrina took one desperate step forward. “Papa!”

Rafael stopped dead. He looked back at his little girl. She was still clutching the scrap of shawl, looking utterly lost, waiting for someone to wave a hand and fix it all. He wanted so badly to tell her it was fine.

Instead, he said, “Stay with your brother and sisters, sweetheart. Papa will be back.”

Then he was gone.

Katrina stared at the empty doorway long after their footsteps faded. She didn't understand why Mama hadn't looked at her, why Papa sounded so terrified, or why the whole house was crying. She only knew that Isabella had slipped, and she had tried to catch her. She had tried so hard.

The hours that followed shattered the Mendoza household into unrecognizable pieces.

Rafael and Susan came home without Isabella. There was no miraculous recovery, no crying baby to fill the hollow silence trailing behind them. There was only the brutal, oxygen-stealing truth.

Susan couldn't piece together the car ride back. She remembered the blinding fluorescent lights of the hospital, the doctor’s flat, careful sentences, and Rafael's hand squeezing hers until her knuckles turned white. She remembered begging. She remembered flat-out refusing to believe them, and she remembered the suffocating weight of Rafael pulling her against his chest while she tore herself apart.

Even his arms couldn't bridge the gap.

When they walked back through the front door, everything looked infuriatingly normal. The furniture sat in its usual place. Sunlight streamed through the bay windows. Somewhere in the garden, a bird chirped an indifferent tune. It was a sick joke how ordinary the world looked when hers had ended.

Susan stopped dead in the hall. Through a c***k in the door, she could hear Gabriel trying to quiet Sebastian and Camila, though his own voice trembled.

And somewhere down the hall was Katrina.

The realization hit Susan with such physical force that she slammed her hand against the wall to stay upright. *Katrina.* The child who had been standing right there when the world broke.

Susan squeezed her eyes shut, but the flash-frame played on loop: Isabella falling. The blood. Katrina standing there with the shawl.

A choked sob tore out of her throat.

Rafael spun around. “Susan?”

She shook her head blindly, backing away. “Don't.”

“Don't what?”

“Don't ask me if I'm all right.”

She turned and fled up the stairs, leaving him stranded in the middle of the hallway. Rafael watched her go, a heavy ache sinking into his ribs. He knew grief made monsters of ordinary people; he knew Susan needed time and patience. He just prayed he had enough left in him to give it.

He had no idea how quickly that grief was about to curdle into something toxic toward their surviving daughter.

Days bled into a gray, heavy fog.

Meals were set on the table, but plates went untouched. Doors stayed shut for hours. The bright, chaotic noise of the house was replaced by low whispers and a thick, suffocating quiet. The children felt the shift deep in their bones. Gabriel stopped asking when the baby was coming home; Sebastian withdrew into his books, while Camila clung to Rafael’s shirtsleeve like a lifeline. They missed their sister, but they missed their mother even more—because Susan had retreated behind a wall none of them could scale.

She rarely smiled. Sometimes she sat for hours in Isabella’s empty nursery, staring blankly at the unmade crib. Other times she drifted through the halls like a ghost, unable to sit still. Every corner of the house threw memories in her face—a folded blanket, a tiny sock, a rattle left on the rug.

And whenever the pain threatened to drown her, her mind dragged her straight back to the changing table.

At first, she fought the thoughts. *She’s only three,* she would tell herself furiously in the dark. *She didn't know. She was just a baby.*

Knowing and feeling, however, lived in entirely different universes.

In the darkest hours of the night, a bitter, venomous whisper took root in Susan’s mind: *If Katrina hadn't been there, if she hadn't tried to help, if she had just stayed away...*

She hated herself for the thought every time it surfaced. But it kept crawling back. And with every return, the warmth she used to feel toward Katrina withered a little more.

Rafael noticed the chill first in the small details. Susan stopped asking where Katrina was at mealtime. If the little girl walked into a room, Susan suddenly found an urgent task elsewhere. At first, Rafael excused it as general trauma—the sheer agony of looking at any of the children.

Until one afternoon when he found Katrina sitting flat on the hardwood floor outside Susan’s locked bedroom door, quietly tracing the face of a battered plastic doll.

“What are you doing out here, *mi niña*?” he asked softly, dropping to his knees beside her.

Katrina looked up, her big eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Waiting for Mama.”

Rafael’s chest tightened so hard it hurt. “Why don't you come with me? We can go check on the garden.”

“I want Mama.”

The simple, unvarnished longing nearly broke him. He reached out, brushing a stray curl from her forehead. “Mama is very sad right now, sweetheart. She needs some quiet time.”

Katrina blinked, her lower lip trembling. “Is she sad because Isabella went away?”

Rafael swallowed hard past the lump in his throat. “Yes, baby. Mama misses her very much.”

Katrina looked back down at her doll. “I miss her too.”

“I know you do.”

“I want to tell Mama I'm sorry.”

Rafael went completely still. The sheer weight of what his three-year-old was carrying crashed down on him. He pulled her hard against his chest, wrapping his arms around her small frame. “Listen to me, Katrina. Look at me.”

She tilted her head back.

“You never, ever have to apologize for loving your sister. Do you hear me?”

“But she fell.”

“And you tried to catch her. You tried to help.”

Tears finally spilled over her lashes. “I couldn't.”

“Oh, my sweet girl.” Rafael buried his face in her hair, fighting his own tears. “You are not to blame. Not for a single second. You wanted to protect her.”

Katrina buried her face in his shoulder. “Will Mama love me again?”

The question pierced him like a knife. Rafael pulled back just enough to look deep into her terrified eyes. “Of course she does. Mama loves you.” He said it with every ounce of fierce conviction he could scrape together, because Katrina needed to hear it—and because he desperately needed to believe it himself.

Behind the heavy oak bedroom door, Susan heard every single word.

She stood frozen with one palm flat against the wood. She had walked over intending to tell Katrina to stop lingering in the hall. Instead, she had stood there and listened to her husband comfort the child whose very existence felt like a live wire.

His gentleness should have calmed her. It should have reminded her that Katrina was just a terrified toddler.

Instead, a hot, vicious spike of resentment surged through her veins.

*Why does he always protect her?*

Why was Rafael always rushing to absolve Katrina, telling her she was innocent, while Susan was left holding the shattered pieces of the family? Didn't he understand that she was suffocating? Didn't he see that every time he coddled Katrina, he was telling Susan her pain didn't matter?

She pressed her lips into a thin, white line as Rafael's voice murmured softly on the other side of the wood.

Slowly, Susan stepped away from the door. For the first time, her husband's compassion didn't feel like support. It felt like an accusation.

That evening, the family gathered around the dining table.

Nobody wanted to look at the food, but Rafael forced a semblance of routine, cutting meat for Camila and urging Gabriel to eat. Katrina sat at her usual spot, quiet as a mouse. When Susan finally walked into the dining room, Katrina’s face lit up with a fragile, hopeful glow.

“Mama?”

Susan didn't break her stride. “What is it?”

“Can I... can I sit next to you tonight?”

It was a harmless question. Under normal circumstances, it would have been met with a warm smile and an open seat.

Susan looked at the empty chair beside her, then down at Katrina’s hopeful, upturned face. For a split second, she saw the little girl who used to run to her with open arms.

Then the bloody image of the changing table flashed behind her eyes, burning away the warmth.

Susan’s face hardened into stone. “Sit in your own seat, Katrina.”

The light died instantly in the child's eyes. “Please, Mama?”

“I said sit where you belong.”

The sharp c***k in Susan’s voice killed the ambient noise in the room. Katrina flinched, dropping her chin and pulling herself back into her designated chair.

Rafael slammed his fork down. “Susan.”

She didn't blink. “What?”

“She just wanted to sit next to you.”

“And I answered her.”

“She’s a child, for God's sake.”

“So I’ve been frequently reminded.”

Rafael stared at her, genuinely shocked by the venom in her tone. Susan immediately grabbed her water glass, refusing to meet his eyes.

“Can we eat one single meal without turning it into a battleground?” she snapped.

“I’m not picking a fight.”

“Then stop talking.”

A heavy, suffocating silence dropped over the table. Gabriel looked back and forth between them with wide, panicked eyes; Sebastian pushed his peas around his plate; Camila looked like she was about to burst into tears.

Katrina didn't move a muscle, staring blindly down at her lap. She didn't understand why her mother hated her now. She only knew she had asked for a crumb of comfort and gotten burned.

Rafael wanted to say more. He wanted to shake some sense into Susan, to remind her that Katrina was innocent and needed them both. But when he looked at his wife’s face—the gaunt hollows under her eyes, the terrifying exhaustion etched into every line—he realized she was dangling over an abyss of her own.

He couldn't fight with her tonight. They had already lost too much.

So he clamped his mouth shut and looked away. And Susan took his silence as a victory.

Upstairs hours later, Rafael found his wife standing rigid in the dark nursery, folding and unfolding the same tiny dress over and over, her fingers tracing the lace until her knuckles turned white.

He closed the door softly. “Susan. We need to talk.”

She didn't stop moving her hands. “Not now, Rafael.”

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Freezing Katrina out. She’s terrified, she misses her sister, and she doesn't understand why you look at her like she’s a stranger.”

Susan's hands froze violently over the fabric. She dropped the dress onto the crib and whirled around to face him. “And I suppose you think I don't miss Isabella?”

“That’s not what I said—measured—"

“You don't have to say it! Every time you rush to coddle Katrina, every time you play the hero, you're making it loud and clear that I'm the bad guy here simply because I'm drowning!”

Rafael’s jaw tightened. “That is a lie. But Katrina is *our* daughter, Susan. She needs us.”

“She has you!”

The raw, jagged cry echoed off the nursery walls. Rafael stared at her, stunned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means you never stop protecting her! No matter what happens, you’re always right there to make sure everyone knows poor little Katrina didn't mean it!”

“She didn't!”

Susan’s eyes flashed with furious tears. “You weren't in that room!”

“No,” Rafael said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, steady quiet. “I wasn't.”

“You didn't see Isabella on that table. You didn't see the blood pooling on the wood. You didn't have to live through it!”

“I know it was horrific. I know you're broken,” Rafael pleaded, taking a step toward her. “I am too. But Katrina is suffering just as much in her own way.”

Susan shook her head wildly, backing away from him as if he carried a disease. “You always make it about her.”

“Because she’s three years old, Susan!”

“And Isabella was my baby!” Her voice cracked, shattering completely on the final word.

Rafael lunged forward to grab her, but she shoved him back with both hands, her chest heaving. For a long, agonizing moment, the air between them hummed with a heavy, lethal tension.

Then Susan whispered, her voice stripped of all fight, “You can look at Katrina and just see your daughter. When I look at her... all I see is that day.”

Rafael stopped dead, the breath knocked out of him.

“Susan, please,” he choked out. “She didn't mean to hurt her.”

“I know what you think of me,” she hissed, turning her back to him. “Then maybe you should just leave me alone with it.”

He stood frozen in the dim light of the nursery. He wanted to pull her into his arms, to remind her of all the years they had weathered side by side, to tell her they could survive this too.

But there was a wall of ice built between them now, and he couldn't break through.

Without a word, Rafael turned and walked out of the room.

Susan stood rigid beside the empty crib, staring down at the tiny clothes. She knew Rafael was right on paper—Katrina was just a kid. But logic couldn't rewrite the nightmare burned into her retinas, nor could it fill the cavernous void where Isabella used to live.

Beneath her grief, something cold and permanent was setting in. She resented Rafael for demanding she be the bigger person. She resented Katrina for simply being present. And most of all, she resented the cruel, mocking reality of a life where everyone expected her to just pick up the pieces and keep smiling.

She picked up the tiny dress, placed it squarely back in the drawer, and sat on the edge of the bed to let the tears come.

Down the hall, little Katrina lay awake in the dark, clutching her plastic doll against her chest, straining her ears for the sound of footsteps that weren't coming.

The house sat under the same roof, but grief had sliced it into isolated islands. Rafael mourned the baby he lost while desperately trying to shield the child who remained. Susan drowned in a sea of her own resentment and sorrow. And little Katrina, entirely too small to carry the wreckage of an accident she couldn't comprehend, was learning a devastating new rule: *Mama's arms are no longer safe.*

The walls of the house hadn't changed.

The people inside them were unrecognizable.

And the chasm opening between Susan and Katrina was only just beginning to widen.