“Once, when I was 27, my uncle asked me, ‘Are you a virgin?’ From that moment on, I started to be afraid of him. A few days later, when he took me to a hotel just outside the city, he leaned over to my ear by the pool and whispered, ‘After the pool, get in my room…’”

 

“Don’t be afraid? You filled a whole hotel room with pictures of me. What is happening?”

 

He seemed to want to speak, but for a few seconds his words did not come out.

 

Then he took from

the table an old one on brown.

 

“Your father made me promise that I wouldn’t give you this until you turned twenty-seven.”

 

I stared at him.

 

“My father?”

 

Richard nodded.

 

“That’s why I brought you here. From tomorrow, this hotel closes for renovations. And this room means a lot to me.”
He turned my mother’s photograph.

 

In the back was a handwritten message.

 

Room 214. The day it all started.

 

I still didn’t understand.

 

 

 

Richard sat down
in a chair.

 

“Your parents met at this hotel.”

 

I didn’t say anything.

 

“But that’s not the whole story.”