Chapter 9: What the Morning Carries
We gave our statements at a quarter past midnight.
Rodrigo stayed.
Elena Varga stayed.
Dr.
Reyes had already submitted her written account and left, but she had given both her card and her preliminary report to the officer before she went.
The sealed evidence bag had been logged and transferred to a forensic unit at a facility forty minutes from the resort.
Sylvia was taken in for formal questioning at approximately one in the morning.
Her attorney went with her.
She walked out of the resort without looking back at her son.
I watched Marco watch her go.
He stood very straight.
He didn't call out to her.
He didn't move toward her.
He just watched until the car was no longer visible, and then he exhaled once, quietly, and turned away.
My parents were waiting in a small sitting room off the main lobby.
My mother had found coffee somewhere.
My father stood up the moment he saw us come in.
He crossed the room and took Marco's hand in both of his.
"Son," he said.
That was all.
One word.
But Marco's shoulders came down about two inches.
"Thank you for being here," Marco said.
"Where else would we be?"
My mother handed me a cup of coffee and looked at my face for a long moment, checking something only mothers check.
Then she nodded slightly and put her arm around me and didn't say anything at all.
Rodrigo found us twenty minutes later.
"The petition for the sealed toxicology report has been prepared," he said.
"I'll file it first thing Thursday.
Given tonight's events and the additional statement from Dr.
Alcantara, I believe we have sufficient grounds." He looked at Marco directly.
"I want you to be prepared for what that report may show."
"I know," Marco said.
"Whatever it contains, it's better to know."
"I know that too."
Rodrigo held out his hand.
Marco shook it.
"I'm sorry I didn't come forward sooner," Rodrigo said.
"I retired because I could no longer justify my silence to myself.
I should have reached that point earlier."
"You're here now," Marco said.
Rodrigo nodded once and left.
Elena Varga was waiting near the lobby doors.
Marco went to her alone.
I watched from across the room as they spoke.
She was small and still, and Marco was bent slightly toward her with the careful posture of someone handling something that had been broken a long time ago and was only now being acknowledged.
Their conversation lasted about ten minutes.
When Marco came back, his eyes were wet.
He did not apologize for it.
"She gave me her number," he said.
"And the name of her specialist.
And the years." His voice was even but careful.
"She kept records.
She kept everything.
She said she kept it in case it ever mattered."
"It matters," I said.
He pressed his lips together and nodded.
We left the resort at almost two in the morning.
The valet brought the car.
Marco's old SUV, which he had insisted on driving even tonight.
My wedding dress took up most of the back seat.
Marco had removed his jacket at some point and laid it over my lap when I started shivering on the drive, and I sat there in a wedding dress with a jacket over my lap watching the coastal road unspool in the headlights, and it was the most normal I had felt in twelve hours.
"I want to find him," Marco said.
His eyes were on the road.
"My father's son.
I want to find him before any of this becomes public news and he hears about it the wrong way."
"Then we find him."
"It might take time."
"Then it takes time."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I keep thinking about my father searching for him," he said.
"For years.
Not knowing." He shook his head slightly.
"He would have loved knowing he had another son.
He was that kind of man."
"Tell me about him," I said.
Marco glanced at me.
"Aurelio.
Tell me what he was like.
We never talked about him enough.
Tell me."
Something shifted in Marco's face — grief, but softer.
The kind that comes when a memory is invited rather than ambushed.
And he started talking.
He talked for the rest of the drive.
About his father's laugh, and the way he argued with taxi drivers and always tipped them anyway, and the Sunday mornings he spent reading at the kitchen table while the whole house slept around him.
He talked about a man I had never met and would never meet, and by the time we pulled into the driveway I felt I understood something essential about why Marco was who he was.
We sat in the car for a moment after he turned off the engine.
"She took him from me too," Marco said quietly.
"Not the way she took him from his other son.
But she took years of truth from me.
Years of knowing who my father actually was." He looked at the house.
"I'm going to spend the rest of my life finding out."
I reached across and took his hand.
"So will I," I said.
May you like
We went inside.
The house was quiet and dark and ours.
