Chapter 15 - CARMEN’S ENVELOPE
Carmen Vidal had not disappeared.
She had hidden.
Valeria found her in southern France under her married name.
Carmen refused every call.
Then Alejandro sent one sentence:
I am the child who left Santa Isabel alive.
She replied the same day.
They met in a small café near Bayonne.
Carmen was seventy-six.
She carried a brown envelope against her chest.
“I always knew one of you would come.”
“One of us?”
“The mothers. You. Someone.”
She handed Alejandro the envelope.
Inside were the original neonatal notes.
They confirmed Montalvo’s account.
The Navarro infant had suffered severe hypoxic injury.
He died the next morning.
But there was one additional page.
A nursing note.
Mother Herrera repeatedly requests visual confirmation of deceased infant. Request denied by administration.
Below it:
Mother attempted access to nursery at 03:20. Sedation ordered.
Alejandro looked up.
“You wrote this?”
“Yes.”
“Why keep it?”
“Because they ordered me to destroy it.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why did my father pay you?”
Carmen’s face twisted.
“I took the money.”
At least she did not pretend otherwise.
“I had two children. My husband was unemployed. Ricardo offered more money than I had ever seen.”
“So you sold your silence.”
“Yes.”
Alejandro expected excuses.
She gave none.
“I spent it,” Carmen said. “I bought a flat. Paid for my daughter’s university. Helped my son start a business.”
Tears filled her eyes.
“Every good thing that money bought reminded me where it came from.”
She slid another paper across the table.
A death certificate.
The name typed on it was Mateo Herrera.
But beneath the correction fluid, another name was faintly visible.
Alejandro Navarro.
Carmen whispered:
“I held him when he died.”
Alejandro stared at the page.
“Beatriz’s baby?”
“Yes.”
“Was he alone?”
“Not completely.”
Carmen reached into the envelope and removed a tiny wool cap.
Thirty-two years old.
Carefully preserved.
“I kept this too.”
Alejandro did not touch it.
“That should go to Beatriz.”
Carmen nodded.
Then she said something unexpected.
“Ricardo came to see the baby before he died.”
Alejandro looked up sharply.
“His biological son?”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“He stood beside the cot.”
“Did he hold him?”
“No.”
Carmen’s voice broke.
“He couldn’t.”
“What did he say?”
She remembered perfectly.
“He said, ‘Forgive me.’”
Alejandro felt no sympathy.
May you like
Only horror.
Because Ricardo had asked forgiveness from the son he was abandoning while preparing to steal another.
