Then he asked, “Did he see me?”
Your throat tightened.
“When you were born, yes.”
“Did he hold me?”
You remembered Andrés standing beside the hospital bed, hands in his pockets, looking at his son like he was afraid touch would create responsibility.
“No,” you whispered.
Mateo nodded once.
He didn’t cry.
That worried you more than tears would have.
After that, he stopped asking about Andrés for a while.
But he started keeping things.
Report cards. Certificates. Drawings. Little awards from school. Anything that proved he had done well, he placed in a blue folder under his bed. One evening, when he was seven, you found him arranging the papers carefully.
“What are you doing?” you asked.
He looked up, embarrassed.
“Nothing.”
You sat beside him.
“Mateo.”
He hesitated.
Then he said, “If he ever comes, I want him to know I wasn’t a bad kid.”
Your heart cracked so cleanly you almost heard it.
You pulled him into your arms.
“My love, he didn’t leave because you were bad.”
“I know,” he said.
But his voice told you he didn’t.
That is the cruelty of an absent parent.
They leave the room, but their shadow raises the child.
You fought that shadow every day.
You showed up for school plays, even when you had to bring translation work in your purse. You clapped the loudest at spelling bees. You learned enough math to help with homework, even though numbers had always made you nervous.
When Mateo got sick, you sat awake all night counting his breaths.
When he won his first science fair, you took him for pizza even though you only had enough money for one medium pie.
When he cried because another boy said, “At least my dad wanted me,” you didn’t tell him to be strong. You held him while he cried, then whispered, “You were wanted by me with my whole life.”
That sentence became your family prayer.
You were wanted by me with my whole life.
Meanwhile, Andrés changed too.
