It was Alma.

It was Alma.

Hector felt his legs give way beneath him.

For six years he imagined that moment a thousand different ways: her returning, repentant; her explaining through tears; her telling him she had always loved him but something forced her to leave. He never imagined her like this. Worn out. Pale. In a sweltering tin-roofed room, with a little girl selling vegetables to buy medicine.

Alma also froze. The bucket she was carrying fell to the floor with a thud. The water spilled between the broken tiles.

—Hector… —she whispered, and her voice carried with it all the years that had been lost.

The girl looked at one and then the other, not understanding.

—Mommy, do you know him?

Alma reacted suddenly. She put her left hand to her chest, as if she wanted to hide the red mark that was still there, identical to the girl’s.

—Sofi, come into the room, my love—he said with an urgency he couldn’t hide.

-But…

-Now.

The girl obeyed, although she turned her head a couple of times to look at Hector curiously.

When the curtain that served as a door closed behind her, the silence became unbearable. Hector took a step forward and then stopped, because Alma’s expression wasn’t one of joy or relief. It was fear.

And that broke his heart.

“I looked everywhere for you,” he said, his voice trembling. “I hired people, I traveled, I pulled strings, I checked hospitals, records, everything. I thought you were dead. I thought you hated me so much you’d erased yourself from the world.”

Alma lowered her gaze.

—I know you were looking for me.

“Then why?” The question came out broken, old, rotten from neglect. “Why did you leave like that? Why that note? Why disappear?”

She pressed her lips together. She seemed to be fighting with herself. Then she glanced toward the curtain of the room where Sofi was and took a deep breath.

—Because if I didn’t leave, they would destroy you.

Hector frowned.

-Who?

Alma let out a bitter, joyless laugh.

—The same ones who later helped you become a millionaire.

He felt a sharp blow to his chest.

-I don’t understand you.

Alma approached the plastic chair by the wall and slowly slumped down, as if her body could no longer bear the weight of the conversation. She had a slight, dry cough, which she tried to stifle with her fist.

“A week before I left,” he began, “your father came to see me at the house.”

Hector was frozen.

His father had died three years earlier. But the mere mention of his name was enough to revive the old sense of obedience and pressure that had accompanied him throughout his youth. An elegant, tough man, for whom affection was always conditional on success.

“That can’t be,” Hector murmured. “My father loved you.”

Alma raised her eyes and for the first time there was fire in them.

—No. He liked that I was quiet, kind, and humble. But the day he found out I was pregnant, he stopped seeing me as a wife and started seeing me as a problem.

The air seemed to leave the room.

“Pregnant?” Hector whispered, inadvertently glancing towards where Sofi had disappeared.

Alma nodded slowly, her eyes shining.

“I wanted to tell you that very night. I had the proof. I was going to wait for you with dinner. But your father arrived first. He knew. I don’t know how, but he knew. And he told me that you were about to sign the most important deal of your life, that the investors didn’t want ‘domestic complications,’ that a pregnant wife, without a prestigious last name and without connections, would weaken you in front of the board. He told me that if I truly loved you, I should disappear.”

Hector felt nauseous.

—That’s crazy.

“He offered me money to leave. I refused. Then his tone changed. He told me that if I stayed, he was going to ruin me. That he would make sure doors were closed to me, that I lost my job, that I never got ahead. And then he said something even worse.”

Alma swallowed. Her fingers trembled as she adjusted her worn skirt above her knees.

—He said that one of my children in your life would be the perfect anchor to keep you from ever flying higher than him.

Hector covered his mouth with his hand. His father’s voice seemed to echo in the room, even though he had been dead for years. Clean, cold, terrible phrases, always spoken as if they were advice.

“Why didn’t you tell me later?” she asked desperately. “Why didn’t you come back? Why didn’t you call me even once?”

Alma slowly let out her breath.

—Because at first I was afraid. Then ashamed. And then… the worst happened.

A soft cough was heard behind the curtain. Sofi was listening.

Alma looked at her for a moment before continuing.

—I went to Puebla to live with an aunt. She died five months into my pregnancy. I was left all alone. Your father stopped sending money. I suppose he’d already gotten what he wanted. I tried to find you, but when I finally mustered up the courage to call your office, they told me you were engaged to a woman from a powerful family.

Hector frowned.

—Engaged? That never happened.

Alma looked at him for a long time, sadly.

—So they lied to you too, or to me. But by that time I was already giving birth alone in a public clinic. And I decided something: I wasn’t going to go back knocking on the door of a man who had already built another life for himself.