“I think,” you say, though your voice sounds foreign to you, “she may be the answer to something I stopped asking a long time ago.”
You do not leave her there.
There are cameras out now. Phones lifted, whispers sharpening, the entire hungry orchestra of public attention tuning itself around the scene. If you were the man the business pages describe, you would stand up, call an assistant, handle this discreetly, sanitize the moment, move it into a private room with filtered water and legal caution.
But that man is already losing ground.
You help Rosa to her feet yourself. She sways, lighter than she should be, and Camila moves instinctively to support her other side. In that instant, something stuns you again. Rosa looks down at Camila with wet eyes and an expression so full of aching tenderness that it is almost maternal, almost familiar, almost unbearable.
“She has your eyes,” Rosa says softly, still staring at Camila.
Camila blinks. “You know my dad?”
Rosa does not answer. Her lips tremble.
You guide them both toward the black SUV waiting at the curb, where your driver, Héctor, looks torn between confusion and obedience. He opens the rear door without a word. The people watching begin speaking louder now, and one man calls out, “Alejandro! Who is she?” Another says, “Is that your mother?” Someone laughs, because people laugh when reality gets too strange and they do not know where to place it.
You do not give them anything.
