Mercedes touches it gently.
“I knitted it after we found Lucia’s hidden letter. I didn’t know if the baby had been born, if it was a boy or girl, if I would ever find them. I just…” She swallows. “I made it because I could not make anything else right.”
You stare at the sweater.
It is too small for you, of course.
Too old for Mateo, almost.
But not completely.
Mercedes sees you looking toward the door.
“I would never ask.”
That is the problem.
She does not ask.
And now you are the one holding power you never wanted.
Later that day, Elena arrives.
Not Mateo’s mother.
Your aunt.
The idea still feels impossible.
She is in her early sixties, with Gabriel’s eyes and a sharp New York voice that fills the hallway before she does. She brings a folder, three photo albums, and the kind of nervous energy that makes people talk too fast when they are afraid of crying.
She stops when she sees you.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “You look like him.”
You almost walk away.
You almost cannot bear one more person loving a version of you that belongs to a dead man.
