Chapter 7: The Child She Buried
Marco stared at the photo for a long time.
I read the message twice and then looked at him.
"Do you recognize the woman?" I asked.
"No." He zoomed in on the infant.
A newborn, by the size of it.
Wrapped tightly, face turned slightly toward Aurelio's chest.
"This is my father.
I'd know him anywhere.
But the woman—" He shook his head.
"It's not Elena," I said.
"No."
He stood up from the wall.
I followed him inside.
The ballroom had emptied considerably.
Most of the guests had left, or been asked to wait in the adjacent lounge while the officers took preliminary statements.
A few of Marco's closest cousins lingered near the bar, watching.
Sylvia was seated in the center of the room with one officer across from her, her attorney — who had apparently arrived in the last twenty minutes — beside her.
She was calm again.
Reconstructed.
She had found her composure somewhere in the time I had been outside, and she was wearing it like armor.
Marco walked to the table and set his phone in front of her, photo facing up.
She looked down at it.
Nothing moved in her face.
"Who is she?" Marco asked.
"I don't know."
"That is my father."
"Yes.
It appears to be."
"Who is the woman?"
"I told you.
I don't know every photograph that was taken of your father before we were married."
"And the child?"
A pause.
Smaller than a breath.
"I have no idea."
Her attorney put a hand on her arm.
"Sylvia, you don't have to—"
"Who sent you this?" she asked Marco, ignoring her attorney entirely and looking at him with the full force of her attention.
"It doesn't matter who sent it."
"It matters a great deal.
Someone is feeding you a manufactured narrative and you are accepting it without—"
"A manufactured photo," Marco said flatly.
"A manufactured signature from a retired physician who has nothing to gain.
A manufactured vial that Dr.
Reyes physically retrieved from your clutch." He leaned down slightly so he was at her level.
"How many things have been manufactured tonight, Mother?"
Her jaw tightened.
"I want to know about the child in that photograph."
"I cannot tell you about something I know nothing about."
"Then I'll find out another way."
He straightened and walked toward Rodrigo, who was seated at a side table with his organized documents, speaking quietly with one of the officers.
I stayed near Sylvia.
She felt me watching her.
She turned.
"You think you've won something," she said.
Her voice was very low.
"I think my husband deserves the truth," I said.
"The truth." She said the word as if it had a bad taste.
"The truth is that this family would not exist without me.
Aurelio was brilliant and generous and completely incapable of protecting what he built.
I protected it.
I made decisions he was too sentimental to make.
Everything Marco has, every resort, every property, every account — that is my work."
"And Elena?" I said.
Her expression didn't change.
"And your husband?"
Still nothing.
But her hands, folded in her lap, pressed together more tightly.
"And whoever that woman is in the photograph?"
"You should be very careful," she said quietly, "about how far you push this."
"I'm not pushing anything.
The room pushed it.
The video pushed it.
Rodrigo pushed it.
Elena pushed it." I held her gaze.
"I just switched a glass."
For one moment, something genuine crossed her face.
Not regret.
Something harder than that.
The look of a person who has miscalculated and knows it, and is already recalculating.
Her attorney leaned in and whispered something.
She nodded once.
Across the room, Marco was on his phone.
He had stepped away from Rodrigo and was pacing slowly along the edge of the room, listening to someone.
He stopped walking.
He stood very still for almost thirty seconds.
Then he hung up and turned around.
He found me immediately across the room.
The look on his face was not grief, not anger.
It was the particular expression of a person who has just been handed a piece of information so large they haven't yet found the shape of it.
He walked to me.
"That was my cousin Fernanda," he said quietly.
"She said her mother told her something years ago.
She said she was told never to repeat it."
"What was it?"
Marco's voice was steady but stripped of everything else.
"My father had a son," he said.
"Before my mother.
Before Elena.
A son who was taken away from him.
Who he searched for for years." He looked at the photo on the table.
"Who he never found."
I looked at Sylvia.
She had heard every word.
May you like
She did not look up from the table.
And she did not look surprised.
