Diego nodded once. He went out without arguing, crossed the wet parking lot, opened the trunk of his truck and returned with something folded over his arms.
It was another identical coat.
Same color. Same fabric. Same work.
In front of the girl’s eyes and Don Beto, Diego opened the lining. There were the initials: D. C., embroidered in the same place.
“I sent two years ago,” he explained. One used it. The other one I saved.
The girl looked down at hers and then his.
“They’re the same,” he whispered.
“They are.
Don Beto snapped, awkward.
“Well, it seems I wasn’t making up.
Diego barely smiled. Then he looked at the girl again.
I didn’t come to take it away. If your mom’s had it all this time, it’s hers. I was just… surprised to see him again.
The girl loosened her shoulders a little.
“My mom says a man gave it to her one night in a cold.
Diego swallowed saliva. The memory returned with the sharpness of an open wound.
An empty road. A decomposed van. Your phone with no signal. A wind that cut off my fingers. And a woman who had stopped her old car to help a stranger when she had no obligation to do so.
“Yes,” he murmured. I gave it to him.
The girl pointed to the hallway in the background.
My mom works here. It’s almost out.
Something moved inside Diego, something that had been buried for years.
I didn’t know why that woman had disappeared from her life after that night. I just knew that, for weeks, she went back to that road looking for her like a fool. He never found her.
He sat down to wait.
Within minutes, the door of the warehouse opened and a woman in the blue uniform of the gas station, her hair collected and the tiredness attached to the shoulders came out. He brought grease stains on his sleeves and a silent dignity that neither the double turn nor life had managed to break.
When he looked up and saw him, he stood still.
Diego first recognized his eyes.
The same.
More tired, yes. More careful. But the same eyes that night had said to him, “Don’t worry, I’m not going to leave you here alone.”
“Mónica,” he said, almost without a voice.
She released a brief exhalation, like a sad laugh.
“And I thought the city was too big for this.
The girl looked between the two, fascinated.
“Yes, do you know him, Mom?”
Monica looked at her daughter’s coat, then Diego’s, and nodded slowly.
For more information, please continue on the next page
