Chương 5
“I found something in her room,” Lucia said.
Emilio straightened.
“What?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Please.”
There was movement on her end.
Maybe she was walking.
Maybe she was looking at the thing she had found.
“When we were cleaning yesterday, I found an envelope.”
Emilio waited.
“Your name was on it.”
The room suddenly felt smaller.
“What was inside?”
“I haven’t opened it.”
“Why?”
Lucia was quiet.
“Because I’m angry.”
The honesty surprised him.
“I thought I would open it and find something that makes me forgive you.”
She stopped.
“And I’m not ready for that.”
Emilio looked at the floor.
He understood.
Forgiveness could feel like surrender when someone was still hurt.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then Lucia said something softer.
“She loved you, Emilio.”
His throat tightened.
“I know.”
“No.”
Her voice cracked slightly.
“I don’t think you do.”
The call ended a few minutes later.
Emilio remained sitting there with the phone against his ear even after the connection disappeared.
On the other side of the city, Lucia placed the unopened envelope on her kitchen table.
She stared at her mother’s handwriting.
She wanted answers.
She wanted an explanation.
She wanted something that would make the pain easier to organize.
But the envelope represented something more complicated.
A final piece of Helena that existed before anyone knew it would become final.
And opening it meant accepting that there would never be another letter after it.
The unopened envelope remained on Lucia’s kitchen table for two days.
She moved it three times.
First, she placed it beside the coffee maker because she thought she would open it in the morning.
Then she moved it into a drawer because seeing her mother’s handwriting made it difficult to focus.
Finally, she brought it back to the table because hiding it felt too much like avoiding something.
Avoiding things had already taken enough from their family.
She sat across from it with a cup of coffee that went cold before she drank half of it.
Helena’s handwriting had always looked the same.
Neat.
Slightly tilted.
Patient.
Even the letters seemed careful.
Lucia hated that something as simple as handwriting could make her feel like a child again.
Before cancer.
Before hospital rooms.
Before conversations that ended with everyone pretending they were fine.
Her phone buzzed.
She looked down.
A message from Giovanni.
Are you coming by today?
She stared at the screen.
She knew what he meant.
Not just visiting.
Not just helping with the house.
He wanted to talk about Emilio.
Everyone wanted to talk about Emilio.
She typed a response, deleted it, typed another, and finally sent a simple message.
She placed the phone down and looked at the envelope again.
The name on it felt heavier than paper should feel.
Emilio.
Not son.
Not my boy.
Not anything sentimental.
Just his name.
That bothered her.
Because Helena was not a woman who wasted words.
If she wrote his name, she had chosen it carefully.
Across town, Emilio sat at his desk at work staring at an email he had opened ten minutes earlier.
His manager had asked when he planned to return to normal hours.
The phrase bothered him.
Normal hours.
As if there was a switch inside him that could be turned back on.
As if the funeral had been a difficult appointment instead of a moment that had rearranged everything.
He closed the email without answering.
His coworker Marcus stopped by his office door.
“You alive in there?”
Emilio looked up.
Marcus was holding a folder and eating a sandwich at the same time.
He had a habit of doing everything halfway.
Half listening.
Half working.
Half paying attention.
Normally, Emilio found it funny.
Today, he envied it.
“Yeah.”
Marcus looked at him for a second longer.
“You sure?”
Emilio almost gave the automatic answer.
The one he had used his entire adult life.
I’m good.
Instead, he said, “No.”
The honesty surprised both of them.
Marcus slowly lowered the folder.
“Okay.”
That was all he said.
No advice.
No motivational speech.
No attempt to fix it.
Emilio appreciated that more than he expected.
“My mom died,” Emilio said.
Marcus nodded.
“I know.”
“Everyone keeps asking if I’m okay.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Marcus leaned against the doorframe.
“It probably means they don’t know what else to say.”
Emilio looked at the computer screen.
A spreadsheet filled with numbers sat open.
A normal workday.
A normal problem.
A normal world.
“I missed the funeral,” he said.
Marcus became still.
“What?”
“I was there.”
Emilio rubbed his forehead.
“But I missed the part that mattered.”
Marcus did not immediately respond.
That was another thing Emilio was noticing.
Some people became uncomfortable when he stopped performing.
They needed him to make things easier.
Marcus did not.
“You want to talk about it?”
Emilio shook his head.
Then after a moment, he nodded.
“I don’t know.”
Marcus gave a small shrug.
“That’s probably where you start.”
Emilio looked at him.
A few months earlier, he would have dismissed that as simple advice.
Now simple things felt harder than complicated ones.
That evening, Emilio drove to his parents’ house.
He almost turned around twice.
The first time was before he left the parking lot.
The second was when he reached the neighborhood.
The house looked unchanged.
The same bushes near the walkway.
The same porch light Giovanni refused to replace because he said the old one still worked.
Emilio sat in the car for several minutes.
He watched a neighbor walk a dog past the house.
The dog stopped near the mailbox and sniffed the grass.
The neighbor waited patiently.
A small ordinary moment.
A reminder that life did not become dramatic just because one person’s world had changed.
Eventually, Emilio stepped out.
Giovanni opened the door before he knocked.
May you like
Neither man seemed surprised.
“I saw your car,” Giovanni said.
