Don't Leave Her Alone

by Desirée de Fez

Genres: General Fiction; Hispanic & Latino; Literary Fiction; Horror

Synopsis

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Full of tenderness and delirium, moving between suburban realism and fairy tale." —Mariana Enríquez

"A darkly enchanted expedition into the eviscerating oblivion of motherhood. de Fez writes with her sharpest knife." —Rachel Yoder

"An eldritch Pedro Almodóvar nightmare" (Clay McLeod Chapman) that glitters in its feverish propulsion, following three mothers in the hushed suburbs of Barcelona, who are awakened by the monsters that live inside of them.

Alba has always clung to her mother, Carmen: to run errands or simply validate every anxiety she’s ever had. Yet nothing can silence the fears Alba refuses to confront. They simmer, then burst, but never quite erupt, and each time, Carmen is found at her side. Meanwhile, Alba’s sister, Diana, struggles herself, juggling the demands of motherhood and work, but cannot recall when Carmen last tended to her.

Two days before Christmas, Alba drags Carmen to the mall. There, she runs into the formidable “widows.” The pair approach Alba and put an evil eye on her. Her nose starts to bleed, which is how Alba knows. Then, on Christmas Eve, Alba disappears, and Diana and Carmen collapse from the pain in their bellies, where a deep gash splits their purging stomachs. As the tensions the three women have long held in explode, they’re finally forced to confront the terror that connects them.

Haunting, cinematic, and strikingly visceral, Don’t Leave Her Alone is an incisive exploration of motherhood that interrogates women’s struggle for autonomy and identity, and ultimately forces the question: What does it take to finally break free?

Release date: October 13, 2026

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 272

Sample

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1

The preschoolers had dressed up as angels. They wore wings made of cardboard and cotton, golden crowns, glitter on their chubby cheeks. The idea was that everything should be immaculate white, to symbolize purity, but a few pairs of beige Decathlon pants and threadbare T-shirts kept the scene from flawlessness. From the stage, Brisa scanned the room for her mother while she recited the Christmas poem: I'm the queen of the house and nougat's my treat, at Christmas I send you kisses so sweet! She scanned the audience for her, her performance switching to playback as she mouthed the verses they had spent weeks preparing with clumsy charm. Failing to see her mom in the crowd, she decided to stop looking.


Diana had done everything to make sure she would be on time for her daughter’s Christmas play. Her partner was going to be in Madrid all day, so a classmate’s mom was picking up her son. She had blocked off the afternoon weeks in advance: She’d go to the performance, then take Brisa out for a treat. A girls’ day, just the two of them. She left the house early, happy to have turned in her articles before the start of the holidays. She’d even finished the following week’s assignments, something she hadn’t managed since she’d gone freelance all those years ago. She couldn’t remember a Christmas when she hadn’t put off her shopping, slipped out of a family dinner, or missed a school play just to hole up and finish reviewing some absurd movie, or rush off to interview a barely relevant public figure. Diana walked down Balmes looking radiant, more put-together than usual, intending to have an espresso before heading to the school.

But halfway there, her heart started pounding in her ears. It couldn't be. There was no way. She couldn't have left her straightener on, could she have? Surely not. She mentally reconstructed the moments before she left the house, but she couldn't specifically remember the moment when she unplugged it. She tried to convince herself it would be all right even if it were on, because she always left it resting in the sink-there was no danger because there was nothing for it to touch. And anyway, she was sure it had a temperature gauge and turned off on its own when it got too hot. But did it actually have a temperature gauge? Was she sure? In fact, she had never paid attention, and it was quite old. What if she'd left the tap dripping and water got on the straightener? Or maybe she'd set it on the shelf, next to the towels, instead of in the sink? She turned halfway around. She called Carlos to tell him what had happened. She wanted him to pick up and tell her what she knew already: that she hadn't left the straightener on, or the door open, or the lock unlocked. She wanted him to make the decision for her, tell her not to go back home to check. But he didn't pick up. So she hurried back up Balmes, teary-eyed, embarrassed. She felt the weight of her makeup, the pins and needles on her face, the sweat soaking through her thermal T-shirt, her too-tight new boots destroying her pinkie toes.

More humiliating than her slow but steady breakdown, than the feeling of becoming as lifeless as a dishrag, was crossing paths with the parents of Brisa's classmates, who all had left home with just enough time but would seemingly still beat her to the school play. She pretended she was texting to avoid eye contact-she couldn't stand when smiling parents pointed out that she was going the wrong way, though she herself had made that joke, too, when she saw someone rushing home to grab a swim bag or whatever else.

After what felt like hours, she arrived at the building entrance, exhausted. She didn't smell anything frying or burning. She climbed the stairs, breathless, hoping she had, in fact, left the straightener on and that something-a towel, a scrunchie-would catch fire the precise moment she walked through the door. She longed for a harmless flame, something small she could easily put out, to prove to herself that she wasn't ridiculous; sure, she had missed the start of the play, but she'd also averted a total catastrophe. She went in. There was no smoke, no fire, no click of the temperature gauge. The straightener, which of course had no thermostat, was turned off with the cord coiled up, set half a meter from everything else in the bathroom. Everything was in order. Everything had been checked, and checked again, an hour earlier.


Diana arrived at the Christmas play late, her pinkie toes raw.

When she walked through the school doors, she could feel the teacher's aide-lost in thought, counting the minutes until she could leave-judge her for being late. Diana's eyes clouded and her legs shook when, from the hallway, she heard the Christmas song Brisa had been humming at home for weeks. She'd been hoping the play had started late, or that the kids in the other year had gone first. But no. They went class by class, in order. Diana walked faster, spilling into the auditorium. She saw the kids on stage, and the exact same shot in miniature, multiplied by one hundred, on their parents' and grandparents' phone screens-they'd ignored the instruction not to take videos. She saw none of the nannies she knew from school pickup. Only rows of family members who'd arrived well before she had, mostly moms. Moms who had shown up on time, serene and impeccable, toes soft and perfect. After the poem, the kids launched into a loosely religious version of a Taylor Swift song. The parents laughed loudly, eager to show they recognized a song so famous that even an alien would know it. Diana sat down alone in the last row, careful not to make a sound, and looked for Brisa in the windows between other parents' arms. The stage was dimly lit and all the children resembled each other, but it wasn't hard for her to spot Brisa. Not just because she could have picked her daughter out even in darkness, but because Brisa was acting in a way that drew attention. In a way, her acting out had made her the star of the Christmas play: The only child not singing, she had crossed her arms and made a mask of the golden crown her classmates wore on their heads. Stung by her mother's absence, she had sunk into the choir. She looked like a tiny felon in a lineup, blindfolded with a band of sparkly paper.

2

Alba planned her summers in January, buying cheap plane tickets as soon as she'd rung in the New Year, before she even knew if she could afford a vacation or what her husband's schedule would look like. In August, she got ready for Halloween, ordering every decoration she could find on AliExpress. And in September, she did her first round of Christmas shopping. Just like that, year after year.

She was the first in her household to open her eyes that morning. It was seven thirty a.m. but still pitch-dark. She looked around. Only a point of light lit the room. Going to superhuman lengths to sit up in bed without waking the baby stretched out next to her, she slid her legs toward the floor, felt the cold of the parquet on her feet, and moved like a modern dancer, careful to stand without rustling anything. Barefoot, she crept toward the hall, sidestepping the clutter. When she was almost at the door, she kicked a toy car, which crashed against the wall. She couldn't believe an object so small could make such a giant noise. It wasn't an accident. She didn't trip. She had done it on purpose. She'd seen the toy perfectly well and used all her strength to send it flying. The result: Everyone opened their eyes, two minutes after her. All of them now awake, tense, and jumpy.

Juan got up abruptly, clearly annoyed. He didn't try to hide his anger; it wasn't the first time they'd been startled awake. And he knew, though he pretended otherwise, that the noise had been no mistake.

"Alba, your mom is buzzing. Let her in," Juan shouted from the bathroom.

"Are you sure?" she said. "I didn't hear anything. Let's see if they buzz again."

Within minutes, the noise of children overtook everything. The morning's silence had transformed into a symphony of screaming, crying, whining, and requests of every kind.

Juan half opened the bathroom door and stuck out his head: "Open it, Alba. Someone definitely buzzed. The poor thing-open the door. It's freezing, and I bet you she hasn't even had coffee."

"I didn't hear anything. I'll wait."

"Is it that hard to open the door?"

"I'm not opening the door unless I'm sure somebody buzzed."

"OK. But who's sneaking around pressing buzzers on a Wednesday at seven a.m.?" Juan closed the bathroom door again.

"No idea. Maybe if you called them to fix the damn intercom, we could find out," Alba muttered, almost to herself.

The buzzer sounded again. At the base of the huge, gray, uniform building, Carmen was waiting to be let in. It was cold-arctic, even. She looked like she'd just woken up and was less bundled than she should have been at that time of year, and her hair, which she was definitely planning to wash that night, lay in a strange shape on top of her head-however the pillow had left it. The building was one of the newest in Cornellà, a cement block built at the foot of the B-20 beltway. Carmen, who'd been in the neighborhood since she was twenty-five-almost fifty years-thought the set-up was dreamy: the best publicly subsidized flats in San Ildefonso. Everything was new, there was an impeccable park, and there was even a rent-to-buy option. That's what Alba and Juan were about to do: sign the papers to buy their first apartment, in the same place where they'd been born and from which they'd never strayed. To anyone who'd lived elsewhere for a while-and who had lived more or less well-the building was pure Soviet architecture, a column of identical apartments. But once you had moved in, you were never leaving.


To get to her youngest daughter’s apartment, Carmen had to make her way through a daily obstacle course. First, she had to enter a code into the intercom system-a code it had taken her months to memorize-and wait to be buzzed in, which often took a few minutes: 1-1-9 plus pound. Then she had to cross an extremely long hallway that was cold even in the summertime. After that, the code again, and some more waiting: 1-1-9 plus pound. Finally, she got on the elevator, and when she arrived at her destination, she waited for her son-in-law to come out and open the metal door that led to the floor where they lived. Juan didn’t always accurately guess how long it would take, and often one of the first sights he saw in the early morning was the face of a seventy-five-year-old woman, eyes puffy with sleep, waiting on the other side of the peephole to be received by her family, who were usually more demanding than warm at that hour. That morning, Juan opened the door to the hallway and kissed Carmen’s cheek. They walked back to the apartment in silence. Before they reached the door, Alba-dressed in threadbare and mismatched pajamas-stuck out her head and looked her mother up and down.

"Mom, why aren't you wearing socks? It's freezing out!"

"What are you talking about. Of course I'm wearing socks."

"You are not! Show me."

"For God's sake, Alba, I'm wearing socks!" Carmen, still in the hallway, pulled off her shoes and revealed a pair of nylon footies that barely reached her ankles. Determined to dodge the first argument of the morning, Juan slipped into the apartment and kissed the children goodbye.

"I'm wearing socks, they're just sheer!"

"Oh, they're sheer all right! So sheer you can't even see them. You'll get sick going around like that." Alba always started shouting first thing in the morning. So did Carmen. That's how it was in their family: They didn't need to be fully awake or even around each other for long to drive each other crazy. "Juan, check the weather, what's the temperature?"

"It's forty," he said while he slid on his jacket and grabbed the car keys. His mother-in-law angrily put her shoes back on and walked into the apartment just as he walked out. Every morning, the same crossing of paths. Every day, the same handoff with slight variations, always studded with minor arguments.

"You don't have to start with me so early, you have all day," Carmen said. Her mother's woeful tone made Alba furious. She couldn't stand it when she played the victim.

"Mom, I just don't understand-What, do you want to catch pneumonia?" she grumbled, closing the door.

"Yes, that's exactly what I want. Thanks for asking," Carmen looked sidelong at her daughter. "Why are you locking and bolting it? And the chain too? You're paranoid! If something happens, what will we do? How will we get out? And anyway, we're leaving now."

"Now? Mom, look at us! Their backpacks aren't even ready."

"If you got them ready at bedtime, this wouldn't happen. I'm serious, Alba, wake up a little earlier, we're always in such a rush." Without taking off her jacket or purse, Carmen crouched and started gathering various children's garments. Her bare ankles showed.

"Please say Juan didn't take my phone." Alba was nervously searching the dining room.

"It's right here in the middle of the table."

"Mom, don't sit there, you just came in off the street!"

"Don't sit where?"

"On the couch!"

"Then where would you like me to sit?"

"On the couch is fine, but you're right on the baby's blanket!"

"Oh, Alba, that's enough. You're obsessed! I came straight from home, I'm wearing clean clothes, I've barely even sat down."

"Damn it, now I'll have to wash it again, and everything takes forever to dry when it's cold." Alba tugged on the blanket, and Carmen shifted her weight.


Every morning, Carmen went with Alba to take the kids to school. And to pick them up for lunch. And to take them back for the afternoon. And to pick them up again. And to take them to their after-school activities: a complicated task, because each child went somewhere different, and they had to plan carefully to avoid being late. It was a long and exhausting circuit, because the school was in Esplugues, half an hour from home, and part of the trip had to be done by bus. No one had suggested the infinitely more reasonable option: that Carmen stay home with the baby while Alba took the other children to class. The five of them paraded in and out every day like their own little commune: grandmother, mother, two children, seven and nine, and a baby in a stroller, less than a year old. Every journey was a whole spectacle. Rarely was there a day without tears or meltdowns or arguments or moments of crisis over something forgotten (school smocks, gym bags, sandwiches). Not to mention Alba’s performances whenever some other public transit passenger complained about the noise they were making. Carmen endured it all through the whole school year. That sacrifice, that modest saint’s life, seemed normal to her, and to Alba. It was the routine most of the neighborhood’s grandmothers followed. Though it’s true that on holidays and weekends and her son-in-law’s days off, Carmen would barricade herself in her apartment, phone switched off. Sometimes she even took the landline off the hook and covered the receiver with a cushion.