I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and continued.

Don’t use this to mourn me too much. Use it to finish your studies. To sleep without owing rent. To eat better than I sometimes saw you eat when you thought I didn’t notice. And if someday you have your own kitchen, I want you to make chicken broth and remember this old woman who loved you the way she didn’t know how to love in time.

With gratitude,
Carmen Ruiz

I stayed still for a long time.

I don’t know how long.

I only remember the distant noise of the alley, a dog barking outside, and the unbearable weight of that letter on my knees.

Then I stood up, went to the wardrobe, and found the false drawer.

Behind it was the metal box.

I opened it with the key.

Inside were several bundles of neatly wrapped bills, the house deeds, and an old photograph.

In the photo, Doña Carmen appeared much younger, smiling beside a young man of about twenty.

Thin.

Dark-skinned.

With a calm expression.

On the back, in almost faded ink, it said:

Tomás, 1991. My pride.

I broke down right there.

Not because of the money.

Not because of the house.

But because I suddenly understood that during all those months I had not been helping just a sick old woman.

I had been walking through the guilt of a mother.

And in her own way, she had tried to heal with me something she could never repair with her son.

The next day her children arrived.

Two well-dressed men and a woman wearing dark glasses, all in a hurry, smelling of expensive perfume and looking annoyed.

As soon as they saw me inside the house, one of them asked,

“And who are you?”

“Diego. I helped her.”

They didn’t even say thank you.

They started checking drawers, opening furniture, talking among themselves about selling the house, about “settling this matter quickly,” and about how much the cheapest funeral would cost.

Then I handed them a copy of the letter and the deeds.

The daughter was the first to go pale.

“This can’t be legal.”

“Yes, it is,” I said with a calmness I didn’t know I had. “Your mother had everything notarized three months ago. I went with her.”

It was true.

One afternoon she had asked me to take her to see “a lawyer” downtown. I thought it was just some routine paperwork.

It wasn’t.

The eldest son clenched his teeth.

“You manipulated a sick old woman.”

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