Chapter 4 - The Room with One Window
Our room had one window and a ceiling stain shaped like a crooked hand.
My mother used to joke that it was reaching down to collect rent.
That afternoon, I laid Liam on the bed and hung my gown on the same nail where it had waited that morning.
My diploma stayed inside its cardboard tube.
I couldn’t bear to look at it.
Mr. Alvarez knocked before sunset.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You accepted Liam living here.”
“I know.”
“You held him when we came home.”
He stared at the floor.
The building belonged to a company that collected rent through Carmina’s management office.
Until that day, I had never cared who owned it.
Now every crack in the wall seemed to belong to her.
“What did they tell you?”
“That the room is unsafe for a child.”
“Then fix it.”
He flinched.
“They want the unit empty.”
I picked up my phone.
“Will you put that in writing?”
His eyes lifted.
“Please don’t make this harder.”
“For whom?”
He left without answering.
I called Professor Santos.
She listened while I washed bottles in a plastic basin.
“Don’t hand over your keys,” she said.
“We’ll get advice tomorrow.
Tonight, pack your important papers.”
“I don’t have anywhere to go.”
“You can stay with me temporarily.”
I shut off the tap.
“I can’t pay you.”
“I didn’t ask.”
That made me cry harder than the ceremony had.
After feeding Liam, I searched my mother’s things.
Her work shoes sat under the bed.
A cracked comb lay inside her handbag.
In a biscuit tin, I found hospital receipts, rent slips, and the birth certificate identifying Liam as her son.
Our mother’s name was Teresa Ramos.
His father’s space was blank.
She had never told me much about the man who disappeared when she became pregnant.
By the time Liam arrived, I had stopped asking.
Beneath the receipts lay a pay stub.
A deduction had swallowed almost half my mother’s final wages.
Recovery of missing funds.
I read it three times.
Then I found a folded note written on the back of a grocery list.
Ruth knows where the originals are.
Don’t trust the office copies.
Ruth was my mother’s closest friend at work.
She ironed uniforms for Carmina’s household and always smelled faintly of laundry soap.
I called her.
She answered on the fifth ring.
“Bea?”
“I found Mom’s note.”
Silence.
“What note?”
“The originals.
She said you know where they are.”
Someone spoke near Ruth.
A man.
Her breathing changed.
“Wrong number,” she said.
The call ended.
Ten seconds later, a message appeared.
May you like
Don’t come to my house.
They’re here.
