Chapter 12 - CLARA
Clara Herrera wanted nothing to do with Alejandro.
She made that clear.
“You arrive with documents, lawyers, cameras following you, and suddenly my mother is reliving the worst year of her life.”
“I didn’t bring the cameras.”
“You bring the Navarro name. Cameras come with it.”
Alejandro could not argue.
Clara had grown up with Lucía’s missing son.
Not literally.
But emotionally.
She knew about the locked box of letters.
The hospital photograph.
The annual visits to Madrid.
The nightmares.
The way Lucía froze whenever a newborn cried in public.
“Do you know how many times she thought she found you?”
Clara asked.
Alejandro shook his head.
“Six.”
Six men.
Six false hopes.
Six DNA tests or dead ends.
“One wanted money,” Clara said. “One was adopted and didn’t know his history. One truly believed he might be Mateo.”
She crossed her arms.
“Every time it failed, I watched her lose you again.”
Alejandro looked toward the sea.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because she finally learned how to live.”
Clara’s eyes filled.
“And now I’m terrified that if you decide you don’t want her, she won’t survive losing you a second time.”
Alejandro absorbed the words.
He had been thinking almost entirely about what had been taken from him.
A name.
A mother.
A history.
But Lucía had something to lose now too.
Him.
Again.
“I don’t know how to be her son,” he said.
Clara’s expression softened slightly.
“She doesn’t know how to be your mother.”
That was perhaps the first useful thing anyone had said.
Alejandro smiled faintly.
“So we’re equally unqualified.”
Clara almost smiled back.
Almost.
Then she reached into her bag.
“I found this after you left.”
She handed him an old photograph.
Lucía at twenty-four.
Pregnant.
Standing beside a chestnut horse.
Alejandro stared at her younger face.
He recognized nothing.
Then Clara pointed toward Lucía’s hand.
A silver bracelet.
The horse charm.
“He made two,” Clara said.
“Who?”
“Our grandfather.”
One bracelet for Lucía.
One for the first grandchild she might someday have.
Mateo.
Alejandro looked at Clara.
“Our grandfather?”
Clara shrugged.
“You’re going to have to get used to pronouns.”
This time, Alejandro laughed.
A real laugh.
May you like
For the first time since Ricardo’s box had been opened, the truth contained something other than loss.
It contained a sister.
