Chapter 10 - LUCÍA
Alejandro stood outside the small house for nearly ten minutes.
Blue shutters.
White walls.
A narrow garden facing the Atlantic.
Nothing about it resembled the world in which he had grown up.
Valeria remained beside the car.
“This part is yours,” she said.
He walked to the door alone.
A woman in her early thirties answered.
Dark hair.
Gray-green eyes.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Lucía Herrera.”
The woman studied him.
Something shifted in her face.
“Who are you?”
He had rehearsed a dozen answers.
None worked.
“My name is Alejandro Navarro.”
The woman went completely still.
Then she whispered:
“No.”
A chair scraped inside.
An older woman appeared behind her.
Silver threaded through dark hair.
Thin shoulders.
One hand braced against the wall.
Lucía Herrera looked at Alejandro for the first time in thirty-two years.
Neither spoke.
Her eyes moved across his face.
His hair.
His jaw.
His hands.
Then his left shoulder.
She could not see the birthmark.
But she knew.
Perhaps not scientifically.
Not legally.
But somewhere deeper than either.
“Mateo?”
The name nearly broke him.
The younger woman—Clara—looked between them.
“Mamá?”
Lucía stepped forward.
Alejandro expected an embrace.
Instead, she stopped several feet away.
Her hands trembled.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He stared.
“For what?”
“For saying that name.”
“It was the name you gave me.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“I don’t know what you want me to call you.”
“Alejandro.”
She nodded quickly.
“Of course.”
Something about the immediate surrender hurt more than if she had insisted.
He took the laboratory report from his coat.
“I found evidence.”
Lucía did not take it.
“I spent half my life looking for evidence.”
“I know.”
“No. You know documents.”
Her voice was not cruel.
It was tired.
“You don’t know what it is to walk into police stations and have men look at you like you’re insane. You don’t know what it is to write letters for twenty years and receive nothing.”
Alejandro let her speak.
“You don’t know what it is to see boys your age on the street and wonder whether every one of them could be yours.”
Her voice broke.
“I stopped celebrating your birthday because I couldn’t survive it.”
Clara put an arm around her.
Lucía looked ashamed.
Alejandro stepped closer.
“You never abandoned me.”
She covered her mouth.
He reached into his pocket.
The silver horse bracelet lay in his palm.
Beatriz had found it after Ricardo’s death in a locked compartment and given it to him the previous evening.
Lucía made a sound that seemed pulled from thirty-two years ago.
She touched the horse with one finger.
“My father made this.”
Alejandro could no longer hold himself still.
Lucía reached for him.
This time, he let her.
She did not call him Mateo.
She did not say “my son.”
She simply held him.
And whispered:
“I looked for you.”
May you like
Alejandro closed his eyes.
“I know.”
