“It belongs with you.”
“I don’t even know if I’m ready to wear it.”
“Then don’t wear it,” she says. “Keep it. Throw it in a drawer. Give it to Mateo one day. But it should not spend another year waiting in my apartment.”
You open the watch and see an inscription on the back.
G.R. — Keep coming home.
Your throat closes.
“Who engraved it?”
“Your mother,” Mercedes says.
You look up.
“She gave it to him the Christmas before he died.”
You hold the watch like it is alive.
That night, after Mateo falls asleep, you sit alone at your kitchen table and place the watch beside your mother’s letter.
For years, your past was a locked room.
Then a neighbor opened it with a sentence you were never meant to hear.
No te preocupes. Hoy tampoco sospechó nada.
At the time, those words sounded like betrayal.
Maybe they were.
But they were also the crack where truth entered.
The next Sunday, you invite Mercedes and Elena for dinner in your apartment. You make pasta badly, burn the garlic bread, and order pizza when Mateo announces that the pasta “looks tired.”
Mercedes laughs until she coughs.
