Chapter 6 - Lucia’s Box

The woman waiting downstairs was Valeria’s aunt Rosa.

She looked older than Valeria remembered. Rain darkened the shoulders of her coat, and she held a plastic grocery bag close to her chest.

“I’m sorry they told you I was Lucia,” Rosa said. “I said I was her sister. Someone misunderstood.”

Valeria had not seen her aunt in eleven years.

“Why are you here?”

“An old friend told me Esther Aranda was asking about Lucia’s work again. Then I heard you were in the hospital.”

Rosa set the bag on Valeria’s bed. Inside were old photographs, letters, and a small address book.

“Your mother left these with me,” she said. “I should have brought them to you years ago.”

Valeria pulled out a photograph of Lucia at a company picnic. Gabriel stood beside her.

“She knew him?”

“She handled payroll for Aranda Holdings. She knew all of them.”

Rosa explained that Lucia had discovered payments connected to Northside Clinic, where Esther sat on the board. The money came from an Aranda foundation account, but some payments never reached the people named in the records.

“Lucia believed someone was hiding what happened to patients there,” Rosa said.

“What happened?” Alejandro asked.

“She never told me enough to understand it.”

“Why not?”

“She was afraid for me. For Valeria.”

Valeria opened the address book. One page was folded over.

In Lucia’s handwriting, it read: E. Aranda. Gabriel. Northside Clinic. Ask about the second account.

Daniel leaned forward.

“You know the clinic?” Valeria asked.

“I trained there,” he said.

Rosa took a letter from the bag. Lucia had written to Gabriel a month before her death, asking to meet him and saying she would not accept another payment instead of answers.

“Lucia died in a car crash,” Rosa said quietly. “She was driving home in the rain.”

Valeria looked at the photographs in her lap. She had spent years believing her mother’s death was a sudden, awful accident. Esther had offered her another story without telling her enough to judge whether it was true.

Daniel’s phone rang.

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He answered, listened, and stood.

“That was the hospital records office. Someone used an old Northside Clinic account to request Valeria’s medical chart this morning.”