All with the same last name.
None opened.
I said nothing.
Neither did she.
But that night, for the first time, when I was leaving, she asked,
“Could you come back tomorrow?”
I did.
And the next day as well.
Her health began to worsen quickly.
She could hardly get up by herself.
Her breathing came in small, struggling efforts.
One morning the doctor at the community clinic pulled me aside and told me bluntly,
“She’s very weak. I don’t think she has much time left.”
That afternoon, leaving the clinic, I helped her slowly into a taxi. Doña Carmen stayed quiet, looking out the window as if she were seeing a city that no longer belonged to her.
Before getting out in front of her house, she said,
“Diego… when I die, don’t let them throw away my things without checking the wardrobe.”
I felt a blow in my chest.
“Don’t say that.”
“Promise me.”
That word again.
And again, I nodded.
The last two weeks were very hard.
She could hardly eat anything.
I moistened her lips with water.
I tucked in her blankets.
I read newspaper headlines out loud so she could feel that the world was still entering through her door.
One night she grabbed my wrist with a strength I didn’t know she still had.
“Forgive me.”
“For what?”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“For not paying you.”
Something inside me broke.
“You don’t owe me anything, Doña Carmen.”
She barely shook her head.
“Yes, I do. But it’s not money that you’re going to receive.”
I didn’t understand those words.
Two days later, when I arrived, the neighbor across the street was standing at the door with red eyes.
I knew the news before she spoke.
“She passed away at dawn, son.”
I entered the house feeling like my feet would not respond.
Everything was exactly the same.
The cup on the table.
The old radio.
The cane leaning beside the bed.
But she was no longer there.
The funeral home had taken her a few hours earlier, and her children—whom I had never seen—had said on the phone that they wouldn’t arrive until the next day.
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