The room was full of boxes. Some were open. Inside were piles and piles of money. U.S. dollars. I touched the bills with trembling fingers.
What was that?
I knew my daughter sent me $100,000 every year. But if there was so much money hidden in that house… where did it come from? And why was it stored in that locked room?
It was then that I heard the door open downstairs.
Soft passos.
I felt my heart almost jump out of my mouth.
And then, a voice called…
“Mom…?”
The voice came from downstairs. Soft, low, but unmistakable.
My whole body shuddered.
For twelve years I had dreamed of that sound. Twelve years imagining what it would be like to hear my daughter call for me again, not through the cold screen of a cell phone, not through a short message, but there, for real, inside a house that I still did not understand and that, at that moment, seemed to me more of a mystery than a home.
I went down the stairs almost without feeling my feet.
And then I saw her.
Isabela was standing in the middle of the room, still with her winter coat on her shoulders, a shopping bag in one hand and the other resting against her chest, as if trying to hold her own heart. Her face was more mature, thinner, paler than I had kept in my memory. She was still beautiful, but there was an old sadness hidden in her eyes.
For a second, the two of us just stared at each other.
Then the shopping bag fell to the ground.
