In old photos of yourself at twenty.
In Mateo’s tiny sleeping mouth.
“Who is he?” you whisper.
Mrs. Mercedes looks at the photograph as if it is a wound that never closed.
“Gabriel Rivera,” she says. “My son.”
You shake your head.
“No.”
She nods slowly.
“And your father.”
The word hits you so hard you almost drop the diaper bag.
Father.
You grew up with a blank space where that word should have been. Your mother, Lucia, never spoke much about him. When you were little, she told you he was gone. When you were older, she said he had chosen another life.
By the time you were twenty, you stopped asking.
You trained yourself not to need what never came.
Now this old woman is sitting in the apartment next door with your baby in her arms, a photograph of a dead-looking version of you on her table, and a letter from your mother that you never received.
You point at the phone on the rug.
“Who were you talking to?”
“My daughter,” she says quickly. “Your aunt. Her name is Elena.”
“I have no aunt.”
Mercedes’s face breaks.
“You do.”
