Adrian received that second piece of paper from Isabel without knowing that, upon opening it, he would stop wondering only why his father had never returned.
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The question that was about to arise was much more difficult: who had decided, over nineteen years, what each of them could know.
The paper was yellowed at the edges and folded so many times that one of the corners was almost coming off.
Adrian looked at his mother first.
Then to Gabriel.
-What is this?
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Isabel pressed the basket against her hip, as if she needed to hold something while he read.
—It arrived a few weeks after you were born.
Gabriel took another step closer, but did not try to take the document from her.
Adrian unfolded the sheet.
The handwriting was firm, slanted to the right.
Gabriel recognized her before reading a single word.
It was Mercedes’ lyrics.
His mother.
Adrian
He began to read silently.
The letter did not say that Gabriel had died.
Nor did it say that he was missing.
He said something worse because he turned abandonment into a conscious decision.
Mercedes claimed that Gabriel already knew about the birth of the child, that he had received news from Isabel, and that he wanted no connection with them.
Then a phrase appeared that Gabriel remembered hearing hundreds of times during his youth, although never in that way.
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A man who aspired to build something important could not allow an early mistake to decide the rest of his life.
Gabriel closed his eyes for just a moment.
Mercedes had used almost the same words when he accepted that temporary job in Madrid.
“Don’t waste your future on a farm and a life that’s too small,” he told her.
At the time, he had interpreted it as the usual harshness of an ambitious mother.
Now it sounded different.
Adrian lifted the
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—It says here that you knew I had been born.