Chapter 7 - The Woman Who Knew Adriana
The police searched the property.
Nothing.
No footprints.
No broken windows.
No sign of forced entry.
The boys were found ten minutes later inside a hidden storage room beneath the stairs.
They were frightened but unharmed.
Tomás kept saying the same thing.
“A woman brought us there.”
“What woman?” Julián asked.
“She said Mommy sent her.”
Julián's face changed.
“Did you see her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she look like?”
Tomás hesitated.
“She looked like Mommy.”
Nobody spoke.
I knelt beside him.
“Tomás, what do you mean?”
“She had Mommy's necklace.”
Julián froze.
Adriana had owned a small gold necklace.
I had seen it in old photographs.
It had disappeared after her death.
“Where did you see it?” Julián asked.
“In the storage room.”
He rushed downstairs.
The police followed.
Inside the storage room, a broken wooden box lay open.
Nothing was inside.
Except a photograph.
Julián picked it up.
The photograph showed Adriana.
Standing beside a woman who looked almost exactly like her.
I stared.
“Who is that?”
Julián shook his head.
“I don't know.”
The officer took the photograph.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
The back contained a date.
Five months before Adriana died.
And beneath it, a handwritten sentence.
“SHE KNOWS WHAT HAPPENED.”
Julián looked at me.
“What happened?”
“I don't know.”
The officer turned the photograph over again.
There was something else.
A name.
“Lucía.”
Julián whispered it.
“Lucía?”
The officer searched the database.
Minutes later she looked up.
“There is a woman named Lucía Reyes.”
My stomach dropped.
“Reyes?”
She nodded.
“Related to you?”
“I don't know.”
Julián stared at me.
“Mariana?”
I couldn't answer.
My mother had died when I was seventeen.
I had never known much about my father.
And I had never heard the name Lucía Reyes.
The officer continued.
“She disappeared five years ago.”
“When?”
“Three weeks before Adriana died.”
Julián's expression hardened.
“Find her.”
The officer nodded.
Then my phone vibrated.
Unknown number.
A message appeared.
“YOU'RE LOOKING FOR THE WRONG WOMAN.”
I stared at the screen.
Another message arrived.
“ASK MARIANA ABOUT HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE.”
I felt dizzy.
Julián saw the messages.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know.”
But somewhere inside me, a memory had begun to surface.
A locked drawer.
My mother's old papers.
A birth certificate with a missing page.
A name scratched out.
Before I could say anything, the police officer's phone rang.
She answered.
Then her face went pale.
“Mr. Montiel…”
“What?”
“We found the attorney.”
“Where?”
“He's alive.”
Julián stared at her.
“Where is he?”
She looked directly at me.
“He's been living under another name.”
May you like
Then she said the name.
“Carlos Reyes.”
