The Dinner of the Absent Ones

Inés opened the door. The cold bit into her hands before she could even reach for her coat. Rodrigo stood by the trunk, wearing a wool hat and a smile that never reached his eyes. Beside him, Beatriz held a handbag against her chest. Behind them, their children, Julián and Elena, unloaded the suitcases without speaking.

“Don’t start,” Inés said.

“I’ve just arrived.”

“Exactly.”

Rodrigo looked at the façade.

“It’s worse than in the photographs.”

“The photographs were taken in summer.”

“The photographs were taken before Father died.”

The name hung between them. Inés felt the cold rise into her throat.

“Come inside,” she ordered. “The rooms are ready.”

The front door resisted when she opened it. Inés had to brace her shoulder against the swollen wood before the lock gave with a snap. The hall greeted the family with its usual gloom, stone floor, and great clock stopped at six seventeen. No one had managed to get it working since the funeral.

Elena set a suitcase beside the stairs.

“Is it still stopped?”

“The clock isn’t a priority,” Inés replied.

“It was for Grandfather.”

Beatriz shot her a warning look.

“Elena.”

“What? I didn’t say anything bad.”

That wasn’t true. They had all said something bad since getting out of the cars, even if they had wrapped it in courtesy.

Inés switched on the hall lights. Two bulbs flickered, and one went out. The house seemed to lean in around them.

“The rooms upstairs are marked,” she said. “Rodrigo and Beatriz, the east wing. The kids, the two rooms in the hall. Clara, the blue room. I’ll sleep by the stairs.”

“As if you’re going to keep watch so no one steals the silver,” Rodrigo muttered.

“As if I’m the only one who knows where the blankets are.”

“Father knew where everything was.”

Inés turned to him.

“Father is dead.”

The silence that followed was so sudden they could hear a branch scrape against a windowpane.

Rodrigo lowered his eyes. Beatriz tightened her fingers around the handle of her bag. At the far end of the hall, Mateo stepped away from the window.

“You didn’t have to say it like that,” Clara murmured.

“It had to be said somehow.”

Inés regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but she didn’t apologize. For months, she had been doing it for everyone: for selling her father’s office, for not letting Rodrigo take the documents, for changing the locks, for insisting that Christmas Eve be celebrated there. If she started apologizing, they would never finish.

She went upstairs with them as the wind battered the shutters. On each landing she had placed candles in glass holders in case the electricity failed. The first flame leaned toward the stairs, as if someone invisible had just passed by.

“Did you hear that?” Elena asked.

“The house creaks,” Inés said.

“That wasn’t a creak. It was a voice.”

“Elena, enough,” Beatriz cut in.

The girl gave a crooked smile.

“I’m just saying Grandfather’s voice sounded a lot like that.”

Inés stopped. The candle trembled between her fingers.

“We’re not talking about that.”

“About what?” asked Julián, who had appeared behind them. “Grandfather, or the fact that this house is full of noises?”

“Neither,” Inés said. “Unpack your bags. Dinner will be at eight.”

“And after?” Julián asked.

“After, we’ll sleep.”

“We could hold a séance.”

Rodrigo let out a dry laugh from downstairs.

“A séance? How appropriate.”

“I didn’t say with whom,” Julián replied.

“With Grandfather, obviously,” Elena said. “To ask him where he hid the will.”

Beatriz went pale.

Inés looked at her two nephews. They had the cruel lightness of those who had yet to learn that certain jokes linger in the walls. Julián’s hair was wet with snow, and his expression was eager. Elena toyed with a silver pendant that had belonged to her grandfather.

“There will be no séances,” Inés said.

“Why?” Julián asked.

“Because I’ve decided.”

“You’re not our mother.”

“While you’re in this house, I’m responsible.”

Rodrigo appeared at the foot of the stairs.

“That’s exactly what Father liked to say.”

Inés descended slowly.

“And you were always the first to obey him.”

Rodrigo’s smile vanished.

“You don’t know anything about what I obeyed.”

“I know you signed the sale papers without reading them.”

“I know you read them and kept the house.”

“The house was mortgaged.”

“The house belonged to all of us.”

“The house belonged to the one who stayed to look after him.”

A door slammed upstairs, interrupting the argument. Everyone looked up. A freezing draft swept down the stairs and snuffed out the candle Inés was holding.

No one moved.

“It was a window,” Beatriz said.

“The windows are closed,” Inés replied.

She didn’t want them to notice her fingers trembling. She went back upstairs, checked the rooms, and found the door to the old study ajar. She closed it without going in. The doorknob was ice-cold.

When she returned to the dining room, the table was set for nine. Inés had laid out her mother’s porcelain plates, the tall glasses, and the cutlery with the family initials engraved on the handles. At the end nearest the fireplace, she had left one chair in place.

It was a heavy walnut chair, its back carved with leaves. Her father had occupied that seat for forty years. Even after his death, no one had managed to sit there. Not out of respect, Inés told herself, but because of a superstition none of them would admit to.

She had placed a folded napkin on the empty plate.

“Are you really keeping it?” Rodrigo asked from the doorway.

Inés set down one last glass.

“It’s his place.”

“His place is in the cemetery.”

“Not tonight.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m not starting dinner by arguing over a chair.”

“You’ve already started.”

Beatriz came in behind him.

“Rodrigo, leave it.”

“No. I want to know what she’s planning. Pretending he’s still here?”

Inés looked at the carved back. One of the leaves bore a dark stain, a mark she didn’t remember seeing before.

“I’m planning for us to have dinner,” she said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re going to get.”

Clara appeared with a tray of glasses.

“The wine is poured. If you’re going to tear each other apart, at least wait until the second course.”

No one laughed. From the kitchen came the crackle of the oven and the murmur of boiling water. Inés had prepared everything with almost desperate precision. The turkey, the potatoes, the chestnuts, the pudding her mother made every Christmas Eve. She wanted to fill the house with the sounds of home so no one would hear anything else.

At a quarter to eight, the lights flickered.

“The boiler’s gone out too,” Mateo said from the hall.

Inés went to the kitchen. The temperature had dropped noticeably. The window was covered from the inside with a web of ice.

“I’m going to check the fuse box.”

“Now?” Beatriz asked. “It’s snowing harder.”

“Exactly.”

She crossed the hall and opened the front door. The wind roared in, sweeping snowflakes onto the tiles, where they melted. From there she could see that the gate was buried halfway up. The path had disappeared. A white mass was moving down the slope, erasing the tracks left by the cars.

In the distance, a tree fell across the road with a deep crack.

Inés closed the door.

“We’re cut off,” Rodrigo said.

“Only until it lets up.”

“You can’t see the road anymore.”

“There’s a phone.”

Rodrigo picked up the receiver in the hall. The cord hung loose from the wall.

No one said anything.

Inés went to the fuse box. The main switch was up. There was no visible fault. As she closed the cover, she heard three knocks on the dining-room wall.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

She turned.

“What was that?” Clara asked.

“The pipes.”

“There are no pipes in that wall,” Rodrigo said.

Elena had stopped smiling. Julián was staring at the empty chair.

“Maybe Grandfather wants dinner,” he said.

“Be quiet,” Beatriz whispered.

Inés returned to the dining room and lit the candles. One by one, the flames illuminated the faces of her family: Rodrigo, rigid; Beatriz, lips pressed together; Clara, trying to look calm; the young cousins, far too attentive to every sound.

The patriarch’s chair remained empty.

Inés took her seat at the opposite end of the table. She couldn’t let fear dictate the night. She couldn’t let the house divide them before they had even made the first toast.

“Let’s eat,” she said.

The chairs scraped across the floor. Everyone took their place.

As Rodrigo passed the empty chair, its back gave a faint creak, as if someone had rested the weight of a hand on it.

Inés looked up.

“Did you hear that?”

“The wood,” Rodrigo said.

But no one touched the chair.

Outside, the storm closed off the road completely. Snow battered the windows with ever-increasing force, and somewhere in the house the stopped clock struck six seventeen once.

Inés raised her glass.

“To family.”

The glasses clinked without joy.

The patriarch’s chair remained among them, empty and watchful.

End of chapter one. 9 more chapters and about 23,580 words in the full book.