Chapter 6: What Camila Left Behind
I didn't sleep.
I sat in the study until three in the morning with a glass of water I didn't drink and the yellow notebook open on the desk in front of me.
I read every entry twice.
Not for evidence.
Rodrigo had the evidence.
I read them because Isabella had written them for me, even when she didn't know I would ever find them, and they deserved to be read completely.
The last entry was dated the day before I came home.
*Day 93.
Elena says Dad might come back soon.
I don't know if that's true or if she's just saying it.
I put my good dress on anyway.
Just in case.*
The pink dress.
The one that was torn and covered in mud when I found her.
She had put on her good dress to be ready for me.
At half past three I went to the small fireproof safe in the back of the wardrobe.
I had not opened it in four years.
Inside were the documents from Camila's estate — her will, her medical records, the letters she had written to Isabella that Isabella was meant to read when she was older.
And one envelope I had never opened.
Camila had pressed it into my hand the night before she d*ed.
She had been very weak by then.
Her voice had been almost gone.
*Don't open this unless you have to,* she had said.
*You'll know when you have to.*
I had put it in the safe and told myself I would never have to.
I sat down on the edge of the bed and opened it.
The letter was two pages.
Camila's handwriting, careful and slow, the way it had been in the last weeks when holding a pen took effort.
I read it once.
Then I set it down and looked at the wall for a long time.
Then I read it again.
Camila had known she was going to d*e for longer than she had told me.
She had used some of that time to write down the truth — not to hurt me, she was careful to say that, not to hurt me — but because she couldn't leave without making sure Isabella would be protected if something went wrong.
The letter confirmed what Beatriz had said.
Biologically, Isabella's father was a man named Marco Reyes.
A colleague of Camila's.
A brief relationship before Camila and I had met, she wrote, that she had believed was over completely until she discovered she was pregnant and the timing made certainty impossible.
She had chosen to tell me Isabella was mine.
She had made that choice deliberately and she explained it without asking for forgiveness, only for understanding.
*I watched you with her from the first hour,* she wrote.
*I watched you hold her and I knew.
I knew what kind of father you would be.
I chose you for her.
I would choose you again.*
*If anyone ever uses this against you — against her — I want you to know that I already thought about it.
I already thought about what it means.
And I decided that a father is not made by biology.
A father is made by every morning he shows up.
You have shown up every morning for five years.
That is what she will remember.
That is what will matter to her.
That is what is real.*
*Protect her.
Whatever happens.
Protect her.*
I folded the letter and held it in both hands.
Outside the window, the Marbella night was warm and still.
Somewhere below, the garden where I had found Isabella on her knees was dark and quiet.
I thought about Beatriz standing in the kitchen doorway, cocktail glass in hand, delivering that information with the precision of someone who had been saving it for exactly the right moment.
Waiting until she had nothing left to lose before she used it.
She had thought it would destroy me.
She had thought it would make me doubt.
She had thought wrong.
I put the letter back in the envelope and placed it in the safe.
Then I went to Isabella's room.
She was asleep on her side, one hand tucked under her cheek.
Elena had left the small lamp on.
The room was warm and smelled of the lavender soap Elena used when she washed Isabella's hair.
I sat in the chair beside the bed.
I stayed there until morning.
When Isabella woke up and saw me, she didn't say anything for a moment.
Then she said, "You stayed."
"Yes."
She looked at me with those clear, serious eyes that Beatriz had found so irritating.
"Did something happen?"
"Some things," I said.
"Nothing you need to worry about today."
She considered this.
"But later?"
"Later," I said, "I'll tell you everything you're old enough to understand.
I promise."
She nodded, satisfied with that, and sat up and asked if there was any toast.
And I went downstairs to make it, thinking about Camila's words.
*A father is made by every morning he shows up.*
May you like
This was a morning.
I showed up.
