He carried the documents in a simple envelope and placed them on the
same table where Isabel had left the first letter.
“Review them with whomever you want before signing anything,” he said.
Adrian took the envelope.
He did it without rushing.
The object was almost the same as the one that had started it all: folded paper inside an envelope.
But this time nobody was using a letter to secretly decide their life.
The decision was in their hands.
Literally.
Isabel watched Gabriel.
—Are you staying for dinner?
It took him a second to respond.
Not because he doubted what he wanted, but because he understood what it meant that she had asked.
—If I’m not bothering you.
Adrian left the documents on the table.
—You can help with the firewood.
Gabriel barely smiled.
—That I do know how to do.
Adrian walked towards the door and, for the first time, Gabriel followed him out without feeling like he was following a stranger.
They were not yet father and son in the form
simple as Gabriel would have wanted.
They were two men learning what could be built after nineteen years of someone else’s lie.
And inside the house, Isabel stored the old letters in the metal box.
She didn’t throw them away.
She never hid them again either.
On top of them, she placed a copy of the new property documents.
For nineteen years, a letter had served to separate them.
Now a different kind of role left something completely different in their hands: the possibility of deciding for themselves what to do with the time they still had left.
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