You were hidden from them.
And they were hidden from you.
“Why didn’t you find me then?” you ask.
Mercedes’s face crumples.
“We tried.”
You want to reject that.
But she continues before you can.
“Your mother had moved. The diner closed. We searched old records, asked people, hired someone once, but we had little money. Then I got sick. Elena had her own children. Years passed.”
Years passed.
That phrase should be simple.
It is not.
Years passed while you learned to ride a bike alone. Years passed while your mother worked until her feet swelled. Years passed while Mercedes sat in some other apartment with a photograph of Gabriel, never knowing his son lived only boroughs away.
You look toward her phone on the rug.
“So today he didn’t suspect anything,” you say.
She flinches.
“I was talking to Elena.”
“What didn’t I suspect?”
“That I was going to tell you.”
You laugh again, but this time it hurts.
“That’s what this was?”
Mercedes nods.
