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When the message arrived, María had been dead for two hours . Ángela was awake, partly because someone in her group of friends had said that would be her last night. They had never been particularly close beyond communal gatherings and had been seeing each other only occasionally for almost fifteen years, but the news kept her awake at night. Ángela was terrified of death . She couldn't shake the certainty that someone would find a solution to technological immortality before it came to her. The fiction had been easier to sustain when she was nineteen or twenty, right around the time when María and the others were part of her daily routine. She had just turned forty-six. Science was in no hurry, but Ángela was.

Dear Angela, the email said. Don't be alarmed. I wrote this message a long time ago, and now I'm scheduling it to reach you when I think I'll no longer be around. I know we haven't spoken much lately (in my defense, you've never been very keen on talking to me), but I wanted to ask you something. When I'm gone, Sebas is going to be devastated. I'm not just talking in the logical and expected way, but more. Sebas doesn't know how to be alone, no matter how much he acted like a bohemian and independent man in his youth. He has a lot of neuroses, he's incapable of sleeping alone, he needs someone to constantly support him and hold him up. I'd like that someone to be you. Although you've handled it very differently, I know you have the same kind of anxiety, one that has always been incomprehensible to me, and perhaps you'll understand each other better than we did on some issues. I also know that Sebas was in love with you when we were kids. I've never wanted to find out if something happened or not; and it doesn't matter anymore. And I know you're alone. I'm sure you'd say you're alone because you want to be, but you're too old to be just wandering around aimlessly.

I'm convinced you'll be happy with him. During these last agonizing months, I've been preparing lists and charts of what Sebas likes, how to make him happy, and how to calm him down so you can get to know him as well as if you'd actually spent all these years together. I've enclosed them. Please don't leave him alone. It's my last wish. If you have any doubts, give my request at least three months to test it. I'd say that's about the average length of your relationships, so I don't think it's asking too much.

***

"That's crazy," her friend Raquel commented as they shared a cigarette on the hood. "You're not thinking about it, are you?"

They had arranged to go to the wake together by car. Ángela didn't have one (nor did she know how to drive), and neither of them wanted to show up alone. The last time the group had gotten together was two years ago, on Andrea and Patricia's tenth wedding anniversary. As was increasingly common, Ángela spent almost the entire time by Raquel's side, not feeling fully integrated with the rest and unwilling to try. They didn't have much in common anymore. Their best moments together, once drunk, were spent reminiscing about anecdotes that seemed increasingly distant.

"No," Angela lied. "It's..."

"It's really powerful that he admitted that Sebas was in love with you at the same time he was making all those lists," she added, already in the car. "I guess that's why he couldn't stand you."

While driving, Raquel and she reviewed what they knew about the rest of the group, who was going to the wake and who wasn't, what they'd been up to lately, although Ángela's mind was elsewhere. It was true that the relationship between María and her had always been tense, but she didn't think it was just because of Sebas. They were very different : Ángela would never have married at twenty-five, would never have spent her last days making lists of how things would be after her death, would never have paid enough attention to a couple to be able to write down embarrassingly private matters, which included details like how peppers always gave her gas. She was too normal and exceptionally organized for everything, a cowardly little mouse obsessed with formalities.

She never understood what Sebas had seen in her, and in a way, his wedding offended her. It was true that he had been in love with her since they met. They had even had an affair one summer when everyone (including María, who was already his girlfriend by then) was out of Madrid for one reason or another. He didn't tell anyone, not even Raquel, and when the university year started, they separated. Two weeks earlier, he had told her that he thought he had never been so in love with anyone and that he was willing to leave everything (that is, María) for her, but Ángela said she didn't think it was a good idea. The next few days passed amid arguments and whining that didn't change her mind, until Sebas said, "Okay, I accept," and gave her what had perhaps been the happiest week of her life. She thought it was a change of strategy to win her over, and that's why she was so surprised when he did what he said he was going to do when the summer was over (walk away and not speak to her except in public) and then three months later he announced that he and Maria were going to get married.

A part of her always wanted him to insist, or to call off the wedding, or to cheat again, with her or with someone else . It didn't happen, as far as she knew. Maybe that's why she'd been avoiding that marriage for over a decade.

"Do you think there'll be a lot of people?" Raquel said as she parked. "I hope not. I can't stand wakes. We should have thought better of it. Going to the funeral would have been more than enough."

Yes, there was. María was the kind of person who was involved in hundreds of groups and committees, and played a pivotal role in almost all of them. They'd never had children (which, in retrospect, was quite odd), but she'd been a volunteer at an NGO for troubled teens, a catechist, and a counselor at the city's free summer camps until almost the end of her life, so there were indeed plenty of children and young people accompanied by their parents. Raquel and she sidestepped them and headed toward the small room where they served coffee and pastries, just before the room where the body was.

"Do you think the coffin will be open?" Raquel whispered to her, and Angela didn't know what to say. Maria hated that last act of self-centeredness, but she had also been very prudish, and who could deny that there was something obscene about a body exposed and made up for everyone to see.

***

Closed. It was fortunate that it was, because it was already difficult for Ángela to shake off the feeling that María was watching her when it was finally her turn to hug Sebas, who seemed, as his wife had predicted, devastated. Although they hadn't touched each other for years, even during the obligatory greetings, he grabbed her with the same desperation he had once held her and pressed his chin against the top of her head. He had always been much taller than her, but the years had made him less clumsy. When he was younger, he looked like a stick insect that had become clumsy upon reaching human dimensions. With a little more weight and a black suit, he was every bit a man. He still wore the same cologne he had in his youth, or perhaps his body odor was so recognizable to her that it didn't matter what perfume he used to soften it.

Her hug must have meant nothing, because he proceeded to hug Raquel and then Patricia in the same way. "Andrea couldn't make it," she told them when Sebas went to greet another group, "things aren't going well. It's possible we'll separate." That was the logic of all the funerals and wakes Ángela had attended: after an initial moment of grief, genuine or feigned, most of the guests only wanted to talk about themselves, the same way they usually did when the excuse to get together wasn't a death. There were very few things that interested her less than Andrea's absence , but she was forced to listen while watching Sebas over her friend's bun. They barely left him alone, and when he had a few seconds between condolences, he would stare at the horizon as if seeing something fascinating and invisible to the rest, and Ángela found herself wanting to know what it was about. In one a little longer than the others, he freed himself from Patricia and grabbed her elbow.

"Do you want a glass of water?" she offered, following Maria's instructions. She hadn't been able to stop herself from reading them, even though she was sure she wasn't going to follow them. "Maybe you could use some fresh air, too."

It was the first time they'd been alone together in a long time, but he wasn't surprised by her offer. "Even though it doesn't suit him, he's often more talkative if he's smoking a cigarette," Maria had written, so she handed it to him. "I don't think there's any problem with him smoking for a couple of months after I'm gone. I was the one who forced him to quit. Just make sure that, given enough time, he quits again ."

"I'm not so bad today," Sebas confessed when he got one, his eyes fixed on the road in front of the funeral home. "My brother is going to spend the night with me so I can go to the funeral. What I'm afraid of is the next day. I don't know what I'm going to do alone in that house."

—If you want, I can come with you until you're better. I'd stay in the guest room, of course. Only if it's okay with you, of course.

He turned to look at her, and then Angela realized that both she and Maria had been mistaken. She'd never been to their house before, so how the hell could she have known they had a guest room? However, the sparkle in Sebas's eyes wasn't exactly due to lucidity, and he took her by the shoulders again and buried his head in her hair. It wasn't exactly freshly washed; she'd done a little work to show herself...what? At that moment, her dirty hair embarrassed her, though Sebas didn't seem to notice.

"Thank you very much, An." That's what he'd called her in the past, only during those months. "If you don't mind, it would mean a lot to me. I'll try not to bother you too much."

***

Of course he won't want to sleep alone, but he'll feel bad asking you to, or like a traitor to my memory, Maria had written in one of her documents . What you have to do that first night is… Angela obeyed: she lay down on the guest bed after they ordered Chinese food (also Maria's suggestion) and exchanged a chaste goodnight hug. An hour later, she knocked on Sebas's door, as Maria had suggested.

"I can't sleep," he said, and sat on the corner of the bed, something he would never have done on his own. How did they manage to get to bed that summer?

"If you want, you can stay here," he replied after considering it for a few minutes. "It'll be fine for me, too. It wouldn't be the first time we've slept together, either."

—Are you sure you don't mind?

He gave her the same shy smile she'd seen so many times in the past and simply lay back down on the bed, leaving a space for her on his right. It was obviously his usual side, so the space he'd left her had been… Better not to think about it, just lie down and wait for him to take the initiative about whether they spoke or not, whether they touched or not, whether they kept the light on or off. I don't think he'll want to touch you at first, so don't force it. You can, if anything, squeeze his arm when he turns over to sleep and see if he wants to be cuddled. It happened exactly like that, and that night they slept cuddled. It almost bothered him how precise Maria had been in her instructions, how well she'd gotten to know him. She remembered then how well she had slept with him that summer, better than at almost any other time in her life: Sebas's breathing was deep but quiet, the kind of background noise others find at sea or in a rattling train. Although she thought she wouldn't make it, she lost consciousness seconds later. "Why did you give me this gift, if you didn't even like me?" she would have wanted to ask Maria then, lulled by Sebas's warmth. She must have truly loved him, that was it. She must have known she would be good for him.

***

"Three months, no more, no less," she said to herself when Sebas finally suggested she move her things into the house, at the beginning of February. Not only was that what María had asked her (who, by the way, had been completely wrong in her final dig: Ángela had indeed had relationships that lasted more than three months, and who would think of insulting the person they were asking for a favor one last time? He hated her more every day ), but it was also how long their relationship had lasted that summer, and it seemed poetic to emulate it, albeit in a different way.

No matter how many years had passed, she found herself comparing that story with her present: in the first week of summer 2020, they hadn't slept together, like this one. In the second week of 2010, she had given him a gift, an absurd gesture, a pen, so he repeated it and bought her a fountain pen. In the third, they finally slept together, and so it happened again, more or less as María had predicted. In this, she hadn't followed her rules: she knew exactly how to sleep with Sebas and was convinced (after reading that particular document, purely out of morbid curiosity) that their sex had been and was much better than the one they had had during their marriage. It almost saddened her to imagine Sebas going so long without such passion, and she strove to compensate for his long absence with an excess of warmth. He seemed to appreciate it. He always touched her as if his touch were absolutely necessary for life.

However, in every other matter, he did obey Maria: she made him breakfast to make things easier for him during the difficult mornings, but she let him make dinner so he'd have the illusion of helping out around the house (even though he left everything in a mess: it would have been easier to prepare it herself than to manage the mess). For lunch, he made his favorite recipes or resorted to the Tupperware Maria had stocked the freezer with, like Tony Soprano's mother. She would pull his legs into his lap when they sat down on the sofa, and if he didn't have the initiative to decide what to put on the television, she had a handy guide to guess the right program. To meet the seemingly essential cleanliness requirements (or so Maria said: Angela didn't think he was that clean), he had paid a cleaner who came twice a week and, among other things, ironed the sheets, something Angela wouldn't have known how to begin. On Wednesdays they went to the movies, on Saturdays they read together in bed, and strolled through the Retiro Park. She made sure to look busy every Friday so he'd be encouraged to go out with his friends from the swimming club without feeling guilty about abandoning her. The rest of the days were so routine that it would have been difficult to know what they were doing, if it weren't for the fact that everything was written down in María's files and notebooks.

Perhaps because of the constant repetition of the same thing, the three months had passed too quickly. "I'll have to go anyway," Ángela would say to herself when she returned from work in a greater hurry than usual, because "It's important that you're there on time for lunch, and that there's something hot on the table. If you don't have time, defrost something or buy it." However, running for the subway or leaving work halfway through that she would have previously finished until well into the afternoon didn't irritate her as much as she'd thought. Leaving on time had its merits, as did spending long afternoons at home. She only saw Raquel on some Fridays, and at first she'd kept one of her lovers for just those afternoons, as an act of rebellion against María's wishes. However, after a couple of weeks of sleeping with Sebas, sleeping with him seemed obscene, so she broke up. "I'll have to go anyway, or Maria's spirit will absorb me," she repeated to herself that day, as she entered a supermarket and quickly scanned the prepared food section, choosing two dishes of lentils with chorizo. There were only five days left until the deadline. "Sebas will be hurt at first, but I'm sure you can build a better relationship now that he's starting to feel better. Something that resembles that summer more, something that resembles how you like to live your life."

She grabbed three bowls of lentils. If she got there before him, she could hide the containers at the bottom of the trash can and pour them into a pot to pretend she'd made them herself, which was more believable if the quantity was large.

***

He surprised her when she was in the bathroom. She'd been waiting for him for almost an hour. By then, the lentils had heated and cooled a couple of times on the stovetop. She was irritated, so she didn't want to imagine how she would feel if she had actually prepared them with her own hands. Maria suddenly seemed heroic to her ; how had she endured such devotion for so long? He threw his keys and wallet down casually, just like always. Angela had learned to hate that sound with the same intensity with which she had learned to love the door opening every midday.

"I'll be right out," he said, flushing the toilet. "Maybe they've gotten cold by now."

"I've already eaten," he replied, without entering the kitchen.

He stood in the living room, with the same bewildered look Angela had seen on him the day of the funeral. María's small voice crept into the back of his mind: Sebas never eats out, so this step is really important. At least not without warning, and never if he can avoid it. She had been so precise about everything that it was hard to believe she could be wrong.

—Is something wrong?

"Do you remember when we were together a few years ago?" Sebas replied, without looking at her. "Maybe it seems stupid to you, but ever since you moved here, I've been comparing our relationship then with our relationship now. What things were similar to how they were back then and what things weren't. How we were moving faster and slower." Even though he wasn't looking at her, Angela made an effort to maintain a neutral expression. "Maybe it seems ridiculous to you, but I remember that summer by heart."

—I don't think so. Me too…

“Sometimes, when I’ve felt trapped”—he ignored her. He didn’t even seem aware of her physical presence in the room—“I’ve entertained myself by imagining what things would have been like if we hadn’t broken up then, if I had insisted a little more or if you had backed out. I didn’t even imagine exceptional things, just an extension of those months that didn’t quite fit with adult life. But I liked imagining it. During certain periods of my life, I almost lived it in real time: I imagined what you would advise me to do about this or that thing, how you would downplay things others considered too important, what we would have for dinner, how we would spend the weekend. María knew. I don’t know how, but I ended up telling her about it one of the times we went to couples therapy.

"That's nice," she interrupted. "There's no need to be embarrassed."

—It was awful of me, but in a way I was glad when you showed up at the funeral , even though Maria had still… Well, even though Maria had been gone for so little time. I thought maybe now…

-That?

She approached to try to hug him, but he stepped back and sat down in the single-seater wingback chair.

" You look a lot like her, you know," he said, again without looking at her. "More than I ever imagined."