María worked in the apothecary, straining herbs under Sabine’s watchful, unnervingly still gaze. She had grown accustomed to Sabine’s presence, beauty, and the destabilizing pull she exerted, which contrasted with María’s own restlessness. When María asked if Sabine was lonely, Sabine replied philosophically that loneliness and aloneness were not the same, and coyly suggested she might already have a companion.

Jealous, María admitted she envied Sabine’s freedom. Sabine countered that María could have freedom too, but María cited her husband Andrés, who had returned for winter and imposed himself on her bed with painful frequency. María internally recited her contraceptive tonic’s ingredients to endure him. Sabine had previously suggested one child might placate the family, but María refused, convinced they would use her until she died.

Sabine then mentioned a plague moving south and coolly observed that tragedy could befall Andrés. When María asked if Sabine’s husband died similarly, Sabine deflected with a smile and implied there were ways to make oneself a widow without relying on chance. This stirred María’s own dark fantasies of killing Andrés, though she questioned what it would ultimately gain her.

The tone briefly lightened as María joked about being an attractive widow, but Sabine emphasized that mourning’s color did not matter—freedom did. Demonstrating with a dried flower crushed in her hand, Sabine declared that without anyone to forbid her, what she wanted would be hers. She then revealed she was tired of León and did not plan to stay much longer.

María was shaken and silently begged Sabine not to leave. Sensing this, Sabine invited María to come with her. The invitation angered María, who felt the offer made light of her suffering and constraints; she snapped, asking whether this would be before or after murdering her husband. As María moved to leave, Sabine followed and told her she was too young to be so discontent.

At the door, Sabine touched María—one hand on her shoulder, the other at her waist—pressing close in a moment charged with desire that María had long imagined. María fought the urge to yield. Sabine whispered that all María had to do was ask, then withdrew and nudged María over the threshold, sending her back into the street.