Chapter 6 - THE GRAVE MARKED MATEO HERRERA
Before they found Lucía, Valeria found a grave.
The municipal burial record listed:
Mateo Herrera.
Male infant.
Four days old.
Cause of death: respiratory failure.
No father recorded.
No family present at burial.
The authorization had been signed by Santa Isabel Hospital.
Alejandro read the entry twice.
“They buried a child under Mateo’s name.”
Valeria nodded.
“If that child was actually Mateo…”
“I’m not.”
She looked at him.
“We don’t know that yet.”
But the birthmark said otherwise.
The bracelet said otherwise.
Lucía’s letter said otherwise.
Rosa’s memories said otherwise.
Still, DNA was the line Alejandro refused to cross without evidence.
A court petition was filed.
The investigation had become impossible to keep entirely private.
A lawyer asked questions.
An archivist remembered names.
A former hospital employee received a call.
Within days, someone leaked the story.
A headline appeared:
NAVARRO HEIR INVESTIGATES POSSIBLE 1994 MATERNITY SWITCH
Alejandro hated every word.
He was no longer a man.
He was a “Navarro heir.”
A “mystery infant.”
A scandal.
Beatriz stopped answering the telephone.
Rosa began receiving anonymous calls.
Then one evening an envelope appeared beneath Alejandro’s apartment door.
No stamp.
No return address.
Inside was a photocopy of the cemetery record.
Across it, somebody had written:
LEAVE THE DEAD ALONE.
Valeria read it.
“Someone is scared.”
“Father is dead.”
“Ricardo wasn’t the only person involved.”
They gave the note to their lawyer.
Then Alejandro drove to the cemetery.
The infant section had been reorganized decades ago.
The original marker no longer existed.
But the burial location had been preserved.
A small patch of earth beneath an olive tree.
Alejandro stood there alone.
Somewhere beneath him rested a child who had lived four days.
For thirty-two years, the world had called that child Mateo Herrera.
But Alejandro was beginning to believe Mateo Herrera was standing above the grave.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The wind moved softly through the branches.
There was no answer.
Only another question.
May you like
If the dead baby was Alejandro Navarro…
who had killed him?
