“I was afraid.”
“So was Diego.”
The sentence breaks him.
Arturo covers his face, and for a moment you see not the man who betrayed the truth, but the father who lost one child and chose the wrong way to keep another. That does not forgive him. It only makes the wound more complicated.
You stand slowly.
“We’re going.”
He looks up sharply. “Elena—”
“We’re going to the overlook.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“She’ll kill us.”
“She’ll try.”
He stares at you.
For thirty years, you were an elementary school teacher. You taught children how to read, how to raise their hands, how to share crayons, how to say sorry and mean it. People mistook that softness for weakness all your life.
Your daughter made the same mistake.
You walk to the hallway closet and pull out the small fireproof box where you keep birth certificates, insurance papers, and the old emergency cash Arturo insisted on hiding after the 2008 recession. Beneath the papers is Diego’s high school watch, the one you could never bring yourself to give away.
You take it out.
Then you open the bottom compartment.
