No one said anything.
Not my uncles. Not my cousins. Not the priest who had just prayed the final blessing. Everyone just stared at that little blue booklet, stained with mud, as if it were trash. As if it had not been the last thing Doña Guadalupe, my Grandma Lupita, had left me in this world.
I was twenty-seven years old, wearing a borrowed black dress, my hands so cold I could barely feel my fingers. My father, Víctor Salazar, adjusted his black gloves and smiled at me the way he used to smile when I was a child and told me crying was “making drama.”
“There’s your inheritance, Mariana,” he said. “An old booklet. No house, no land, no money. Your grandmother was always good at acting mysterious.”
My stepmother, Patricia, let out a little laugh behind her dark sunglasses.
“Poor thing,” she murmured. “She still thinks the old lady left her a treasure.”
“If there are fifty pesos in it, you’re buying tacos.”
Some cousins laughed.
