Emiliano embraced them both in the middle of the road, feeling the firewood, the bones, the sweat, the fragility. And in that embrace, he understood that something was deeply wrong.
“What are you doing here? What about the house? What about the land? What about the workers?” he asked, pulling away slightly.
Don Jacinto lowered his gaze.
Doña Carmen squeezed her son’s arm.
“Not here, my boy,” she whispered. “Let’s go to where we’re living.”
The phrase hit Emiliano like a stone.
He said nothing else. He drove slowly down a narrow path that went deep between huizaches and mesquite trees. Valeria sat in silence. The old couple followed behind on foot, still with the firewood on their backs, as if that were normal.
But it was not normal.
And it was no less painful when they arrived.
It was not a house. It was a poorly patched shack, with unplastered concrete-block walls, a rusty tin roof, and a dirt floor. Outside there was a makeshift stove, a rope with two old changes of clothes hanging from it, and a bucket under a dry leak.
Valeria brought a hand to her chest.
Emiliano did not speak. He felt that if he opened his mouth, he would scream or cry, and he still did not know which of the two hurt more.
Once inside, sitting on a wooden bench, Don Jacinto began to tell the story.
Six years earlier, Doña Carmen had fallen ill with a heart condition. The doctor at the health center said she needed expensive medicine and tests in the city. That year, the harvest was bad. There was not enough. Desperate, Don Jacinto went to ask his younger brother, Rogelio Salgado, for help, a man with an easy smile and a murky soul whom Emiliano had never quite been able to love.
Rogelio lent him money.
But he placed some papers in front of him.
“He said it was collateral for the loan,” Don Jacinto explained, twisting the hat in his hands. “I trusted him. He was my brother.”
His voice broke.
“Later he came out saying it wasn’t collateral. That I had signed the house over to him. The house and the land.”
Emiliano felt his blood turn cold.
“And you just let it stay that way?”
Doña Carmen looked at him with red eyes.
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