Chapter 5 - THE THINGS THEY TRIED TO BURN
By the time we reached the house, security had stopped the moving truck.
Smoke drifted above the side driveway.
Rafael stood beside a metal drum, holding a garden hose like a man who had helpfully discovered someone else’s fire.
“Old bills,” he said.
Mika stepped past him.
“Then you won’t mind identifying them.”
We had come with local officers after reporting the suspected fraud and possible destruction of records. They separated us before Rafael could turn the argument into a family performance.
Bianca stayed beneath the front awning.
“This is harassment.”
One of the movers looked miserable.
“Ma’am told us the paintings were going for restoration.”
“Who signed your job order?” Mika asked.
He showed her.
Bianca’s name.
The officers documented what remained around the drum.
Wet paper.
Blackened folders.
Part of an invoice with the clinic’s letterhead.
Rafael watched every movement.
Inside, I walked to the service room.
Someone had stripped the cot.
The cup was gone.
Even the towel.
For a second, I doubted what I had seen.
Then I remembered the photographs I had taken before leaving.
They had not cleaned the room.
They had cleaned the evidence.
A soft knock came from the back door.
Nestor, the driver I thought I had been paying, stood outside the screen.
He looked thinner than I remembered.
“Ma’am.”
“Where have you been?”
“Your brother let me go last year.”
I stared at him.
“Your salary still leaves the account.”
He looked toward Rafael.
“I haven’t received anything since February.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“He said your company was in trouble. That you were ashamed.”
Another lie built from something that sounded like love.
Nestor took a small brass key from his pocket.
“Cora gave me this before she went to the clinic.”
“What does it open?”
“The old sewing cabinet. Your mother’s.”
We found the cabinet in a storage room beneath stacked Christmas decorations.
The key opened its lowest drawer.
Inside lay a notebook wrapped in a pillowcase.
My mother’s handwriting filled the pages.
Dates.
Amounts.
Names.
At first, neat lines.
Later, shaky ones.
One entry made my knees weaken.
Rafael says Andrea stopped sending money. Sold wedding earrings for medicine.
Another:
Cora says do not sign anything else.
On the final written page, the ink had smeared.
But I could read every word.
May you like
Cora did not leave.
They took her after midnight.
