Chapter 6 - The Day I Walked Back Through Her Door
I recognized Victor’s voice.
I locked the door.
“How did you get inside?”
No answer.
I called Gabriel.
Then police.
Victor spoke again.
“You don’t understand what your son did.”
“I understand enough.”
“No. You don’t.”
“What do you want?”
“The original recording.”
“I don’t have it.”
“He gave it to you.”
“He gave me many things.”
Victor cursed.
Then the footsteps moved away.
By the time police arrived, he was gone.
A basement window had been forced.
But Victor had made a mistake.
He had confirmed something existed.
An original.
We searched Neftalí’s office.
Nothing.
His bedroom.
Nothing.
Garage.
Nothing.
Then I remembered his words about the altar.
Some things should stay where people forget to look.
There had been another altar.
Not in the cabin.
In our old family church.
Neftalí had restored it years earlier.
Gabriel and I drove there.
Behind a removable wooden panel was an envelope.
Inside was a digital recorder.
The original.
It contained a conversation between Neftalí, Celeste, and Victor.
Neftalí confronted them.
“You forged my mother’s signature.”
Celeste denied it.
Neftalí played a recording.
Victor panicked.
Then Celeste said:
“You should have stayed out of this.”
Neftalí replied:
“It’s my company.”
“No,” Celeste said. “It was supposed to be our life.”
“You mean your money.”
Then came the sentence that changed the investigation.
Victor said:
“We’ve already changed the medication. There’s no going backward now.”
Silence.
Neftalí asked:
“What did you say?”
The recording erupted into movement.
Then stopped.
He must have hidden the recorder afterward.
The police acted that evening.
Victor was arrested.
Celeste was detained for questioning.
She denied everything.
Victor did not.
Faced with the recording and financial evidence, he began protecting himself.
He admitted to fraud.
He admitted to forging documents.
He admitted to an affair with Celeste.
Then he blamed her for the medication.
Celeste blamed him.
It was ugly.
Cowardly.
Exactly what Neftalí had expected.
The toxicology investigation was reopened.
Pharmacy records showed Victor had obtained the medication through a fraudulent prescription.
Security footage showed Celeste collecting it.
Messages recovered from Victor’s deleted cloud account discussed dosage.
The truth was no longer a suspicion.
My son had been killed slowly by people who ate dinner at his table.
Celeste was arrested.
As officers escorted her through the same entrance hall where she had expelled me, she stopped.
“Eulalia.”
I looked at her.
“You think you won?”
“No.”
“You lost your son.”
The words struck exactly where she intended.
For a moment I could not breathe.
Then I looked at her handcuffs.
“So did you.”
She flinched.
Because whatever Celeste had become, Neftalí had once loved her.
And perhaps, somewhere beneath greed and resentment, she had once loved him.
That made what she did worse.
Not better.
Months passed.
The court invalidated the forged transfer.
The house returned to the trust.
Financial investigators recovered much of the stolen money.
Victor accepted a plea agreement on financial charges while prosecutors prepared the homicide case.
Celeste refused every deal.
She insisted she was innocent.
The trial lasted six weeks.
I testified.
So did Gabriel.
Helena had not betrayed us; she had been abducted briefly and forced to surrender the box. Police found her alive after tracing Victor’s vehicle. Her testimony filled several gaps.
Rosa testified against her daughter.
That nearly broke her.
When prosecutors played Neftalí’s recording, Celeste stared at the table.
She did not look at me once.
The jury deliberated for nine hours.
Guilty.
When the verdict was read, I expected satisfaction.
Instead, I cried.
Not for Celeste.
For Neftalí.
Justice does not raise the dead.
It does not restore birthdays.
It does not return the sound of a key turning in the door.
It simply tells the world that what happened mattered.
That night, I returned home.
The mansion felt enormous.
Too enormous.
Every room carried Neftalí.
His coffee cup.
His books.
A jacket he had forgotten.
I walked into his office and sat behind his desk.
For the first time, I allowed myself to ask the question I had avoided.
What now?
I was seventy-two.
I owned a four-million-dollar house I did not want.
Money I did not need.
Rooms full of memories that hurt.
Then Rebecca called.
“We finished reviewing the final trust documents.”
“Is there another problem?”
“No.”
Her voice sounded strange.
“There’s another beneficiary.”
“Who?”
“I think you should come to my office.”
“Tell me.”
She hesitated.
“Eulalia, Neftalí left instructions concerning a child.”
My heart stopped.
“Neftalí didn’t have children.”
Rebecca was silent.
May you like
Then she said:
“That’s what everyone believed.”
