Vanessa appeared at the top of the stairs.
“What’s happening?”
Nobody answered.
She came down slowly.
Her eyes moved from my mother to Rebecca and finally to me.
“Adrian?”
I looked at her.
“Did you know Elena was pregnant after our divorce?”
Vanessa stopped.
Only for a fraction of a second.
But after the airport, I had become sensitive to fractions of seconds.
“No.”
Too fast.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course.”
I studied her face.
She looked offended.
Not confused.
Offended.
As if the question itself were dangerous.
My mother stepped between us verbally.
“Adrian, enough.”
I turned toward her.
“No.”
For the first time in years, I saw fear in my mother’s expression.
Not anger.
Fear.
I picked up my keys.
“Where are you going?” Vanessa asked.
“To find Elena.”
Patricia immediately said, “Don’t.”
I stopped.
There it was again.
Too quick.
Too urgent.
“Why?”
“Because you’re engaged.”
“What does my engagement have to do with whether I have a five-year-old child somewhere?”
Vanessa’s face lost color.
I looked directly at her.
She looked away.
Something cold settled inside me.
I left.
At the airport, Elena was no longer near the café.
I asked an employee whether she was working.
He told me her shift had ended.
I did not have her current phone number.
The old number in my contacts had been disconnected years earlier.
I searched online.
Almost nothing.
No public social media.
No current employer beyond the airport contractor.
No address I could verify.
I drove back to Coral Gables feeling more helpless with every mile.
My father’s old study was at the back of my mother’s house.
He had died two years after I moved to Canada.
Patricia had barely changed the room.
His books were still arranged by subject.
His reading glasses remained inside the top drawer.
A framed photograph of us fishing when I was twelve sat beside an old brass lamp.
My father had been an attorney.
Not a glamorous one.
He handled estates, property disputes, and small business matters for families who usually arrived at his office carrying more paper than money.
He kept everything.
Receipts.
Letters.
Copies.
Notes.
Folders inside folders.
When I was a teenager, my mother complained that he would document breakfast if someone gave him enough time.
That morning, I was grateful for it.
I opened the lower cabinets.
Tax files.
Insurance records.
Property documents.
Then I saw a dark green accordion folder labeled FAMILY — PRIVATE.
