Before getting into the car, he looked at the dilapidated facade.
A window needed repair.
Part of the roof
It showed signs of moisture.
The fence was bent on one side.
He thought about the large house where Mercedes lived and the monthly transfers he had authorized for years without questioning them.
He took out his phone.
This time he called his lawyer.
—In addition to canceling the sale, I want to suspend any movement related to the property until we review the property documents.
There was a pause on the other side.
Gabriel added:
—And I want a full report of the accounts my mother uses with my authorization. Don’t close anything yet. Just block any new expenses that require my approval.
I wasn’t seeking revenge.
He needed to stop Mercedes from moving pieces while he still didn’t know how many she had touched.
Then he called his mother.
Mercedes answered on the second ring.
—Gabriel, have you already signed the sale?
He looked at the house through the windshield.
-No.
Silence.
-Because?
—I found Isabel.
The response took too long.
Maybe just two seconds.
But Gabriel knew his mother.
Mercedes never needed two seconds.
-Whom?
—Don’t do that.
Gabriel’s voice lowered.
—I found Isabel. She’s alive. And she has a nineteen-year-old son.
Mercedes breathed a sigh of relief on the other side.
—Gabriel, there are things you don’t understand.
There it was.
He didn’t ask how it was possible.
He did not express surprise.
He didn’t say that he must be wrong.
He said there were things he didn’t understand.
Gabriel gripped the steering wheel.
—I’m going to see you tomorrow.
—There’s no need to dramatize.
—Nineteen years old, Mom.
—I did what I thought was best for you.
Gabriel closed his eyes.
That sentence completely eliminated any possibility of an innocent mistake.
-Tomorrow.
He hung up.
Mercedes received him the next day at the house that Gabriel had bought for her twelve years earlier.
She was dressed as if she were expecting an awkward conversation, not a family catastrophe.
He didn’t offer coffee.
Gabriel placed a copy of the letter on the table.
that Isabel had received after Adrian’s birth.
Mercedes looked at her.
He didn’t ask where it had come from.
“That boy would never have had a place in your life,” she said.
Gabriel remained standing.
The phrase was almost identical to the one she had used for years to justify every sacrifice made in the name of her future.
—His name is Adrian.
Mercedes looked away.
—It doesn’t change what I’m trying to tell you.
—It changes everything.
—You were in your early twenties. You didn’t know what you wanted. Isabel would have kept you on that farm. A child would have finished it off.
Gabriel placed his hands on the table.
—I was married to her.
—You were too young.
—She was my wife.
—And you were wasting your ability.
Gabriel looked at her without fully recognizing the woman in front of him.
For decades he had interpreted Mercedes’s harshness as concern.
Even when she despised his decisions, he assumed there was a reason behind them.
protective intention.
Now he understood the cost of having confused control with care.
—You told me he had disappeared in the flood.
Mercedes did not respond.
—You saw me looking for her.
Nothing.
—You saw me say goodbye in front of an empty coffin.
Mercedes finally raised her head.
—If you had known she was still alive, you would have gone back to her.
-Yeah.
—That’s why I couldn’t tell you.
The simplicity of the response was worse than a scream.
Gabriel sat down.
—Did you forge the first letter?
Mercedes denied it once.
—Someone wrote it at my request.
—And the money?
—I sent it.
—The letters from Isabel that I never received?
Mercedes remained silent.
Gabriel repeated:
—Did you intercept them?
—Some of them reached my hands.
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