Amaia Salazar—Flora

Amaia Salazar and Flora’s relationship is an estranged sisterhood marked by suspicion, withheld knowledge, and moments of difficult care. Flora is seven years older, and their exchanges expose different ways of living with the violence of their childhood: Amaia pursues explanations through investigation, while Flora has kept crucial memories private. Their bond does not resolve into easy reconciliation. Instead, it shifts between accusation and warning, silence and disclosure, with Flora’s eventual testimony giving Amaia a witness to a danger she had faced as a child.

Sisters divided by the investigation

Amaia visits Flora under the stated pretext of an investigation and asks about Anne Arbizu. Flora’s smile falters, and the subject quickly becomes a test of how much the sisters know—and how far each will go in speaking plainly. Amaia lays out the connections as she sees them: Anne had been involved with Freddy, whose relationship with Ros had brought pain; Anne had also been close enough to Flora for the two women to part with embraces and kisses. Amaia then advances her most serious accusation: Anne died in the river at Víctor’s hands, and Flora killed her former husband of twenty years. Amaia says she does not believe Flora’s account of self-defense, arguing that Víctor had been incapable of standing up to Flora and would not have dared threaten her.

The confrontation is not simply about what happened to Víctor. Amaia also challenges Flora’s earlier way of speaking about female victims. She remembers Flora defending a supposed purifying guardian who punished allegedly insolent girls, and argues that Flora had not cared about the girls being killed. In Amaia’s interpretation, Flora intervened because Víctor had harmed Anne, not because he was killing girls. Flora rejects Amaia’s claim that her words had revealed her real beliefs, saying she had spoken to provoke Víctor; she also insists that he threatened her and points out that Amaia had been present when he shouted that he would kill her. The sisters thus hold competing accounts of both Flora’s motives and the danger she faced.

After Amaia apologizes, Flora answers not with reassurance but with a cold warning. She tells her sister to stop pursuing Anne, says Amaia does not understand the case, and dismisses her investigative method as useless in it. Her warning makes their distance explicit: Flora speaks as someone who believes Amaia is entering dangerous territory, but the form of the warning also shuts down discussion. She leaves Amaia with no explanation that would settle the accusation.

A guarded opening at the cemetery

Later, the sisters meet in the cemetery, where Amaia finds Flora standing motionless before Anne Arbizu’s grave, her eyes wet. The setting brings their disagreement into contact with grief: Flora has come to Anne’s grave, but the evidence does not establish what she is thinking or what her tears mean. After Flora turns away, Amaia asks whether the family has another mausoleum or grave in the cemetery or elsewhere in the valley. Flora says there is none and complains that the family dead are scattered through the cemetery: the great-grandparents are above, while the grandparents and their father are below, like poor people.

Amaia wonders why their parents never bought a family mausoleum and remarks that the decision seems unlike their mother, who appears willing to be buried beside their grandmother Juanita. Flora supplies a concrete piece of family knowledge: she has had a letter in their mother’s handwriting for years, containing instructions for her funeral and burial. When Amaia asks what Flora remembers from the year she was born, Flora resists the question, saying she cannot simply produce a memory on demand. Amaia’s cold confirmation of something Flora says prompts her to turn away and threaten to leave if Amaia is going to speak to her that way. Their exchange shows how quickly an attempt to recover shared history can become another confrontation.

As Flora leaves the cemetery, Amaia notices a small shiny walnut at Anne’s grave. She realizes Flora had been holding it shortly before Amaia called to her, replaces it where it had been, and follows her sister toward the exit. The object is a precise, unexplained trace of Flora’s visit: Amaia observes it, but the sisters do not discuss its meaning. Flora’s next action is more direct. She calls Amaia and gives her the name and address of Elena Ochoa, a former friend of their mother who lives in the first white house beside the market. Flora says the friendship ended after a quarrel many years earlier and identifies Elena as the person who knew their mother best at that time. The help comes with a condition: Amaia must show respect and not speak badly of their mother. Flora’s earlier refusal has not ended their contact; it has made assistance conditional on trust and loyalty to family.

The memory Flora kept

In a later conversation with Ros, Amaia hears what Flora had witnessed when they were children. Flora clarifies that she is not referring to familiar, less serious memories of their mother cutting Ros’s hair, refusing to dance with her, or giving her terrible presents. One night, when Amaia was insisting on sleeping close beside Flora, Flora waited until Amaia was asleep and changed beds with her. Rosario Iturzaeta came to the bed believing Flora was Amaia and spoke of not eating the little girl that night. Flora heard the words clearly.

Flora says she got up after Rosario Iturzaeta left and returned to lie beside Amaia, frightened. From then on, she knew something was wrong. She continued letting Amaia sleep beside her and says she watched their mother watching Amaia. Flora had never told anyone before. The disclosure revises the meaning of their childhood closeness: Flora’s willingness to share her bed was not only sisterly comfort but also, as she explains it, a way of keeping Amaia near after she understood the threat. Her silence lasted for years, and the belated telling makes her an eyewitness to the danger that Amaia herself could not safely interpret as a child.

Amaia tells Flora she should not torment herself because the girls were too young to do anything. She places responsibility on their father, Juan Salazar, as the adult who should have protected her and failed to do so. The exchange gives Flora’s memory a painful consequence: it establishes that she recognized the threat but could not stop it, while Amaia directs blame away from her sister and toward the parent responsible for their safety. Flora’s apology and Amaia’s response make room for tenderness, but neither erases the years of fear or the fact that the story had remained unspoken.

The warning returns

The sisters’ uneasy trust surfaces again when Amaia calls Flora while investigating a murderer’s house. Amaia asks whether Flora told their mother that Amaia was going to have a child. Flora first hesitates, then confirms that she had told Rosario Iturzaeta she was going to be a grandmother. At the time, they thought the baby would be a girl. Flora says their mother initially seemed pleased and asked what the child would be called; when Flora said Amaia had not chosen a name, Rosario Iturzaeta began to laugh and said horrible things. Flora had not raised the pregnancy again after seeing that reaction.

Pressed by Amaia to say what their mother had said, Flora initially argues that Amaia is better off not knowing, because Rosario Iturzaeta is ill and sometimes says terrible things. She eventually tells her that their mother threatened to eat the little girl. The words connect the present danger to the threat Flora heard as a child: in both memories, Rosario Iturzaeta’s language turns a young girl into something to be consumed. Flora’s disclosure therefore carries more than one fact. It confirms that she had tried to shield Amaia from their mother’s response to the pregnancy, and it gives Amaia a chilling recurrence that links the remembered childhood threat to the anticipated child.

Flora’s role in Amaia’s life remains defined by this unresolved mixture of resistance and protection. She contests Amaia’s suspicions about Víctor, warns her away from the Anne Arbizu investigation, and refuses questions when she feels attacked. Yet she also identifies a valuable witness, guardedly explains family matters, shares the memory she had never told anyone, and reveals what their mother said about Amaia’s baby. Their estrangement is not an absence of attachment: it is a relationship in which care often arrives late, under pressure, and alongside anger.