Alejandro stared.
“You can miss somebody who hurt you?”
Gabriel looked up.
“You will learn that if you haven't already.”
Alejandro thought about Esther.
Valeria.
Maybe one day himself.
Gabriel continued.
“Rafael loved motorcycles.”
Alejandro almost laughed.
“So do I.”
“Yes.”
“He hated olives.”
“So do I.”
Gabriel smiled sadly.
“He played piano.”
Alejandro froze.
He had played piano since childhood.
Nobody else in the immediate family did.
Suddenly genetics appeared in ridiculous details.
Preferences.
Gestures.
Hands.
Alejandro stared at his fingers.
Gabriel noticed.
“Do not do that to yourself.”
“What?”
“Turn every part of you into evidence.”
Alejandro looked up.
Gabriel continued.
“You are not a puzzle that needs to be divided between me and him.”
Alejandro swallowed.
“You are yourself.”
That sentence stayed with him.
Later that morning, Esther joined them.
She carried a box.
Old photographs.
Letters.
Documents.
Everything she had hidden.
Alejandro stared at it.
“What’s this?”
“The rest.”
He almost laughed.
“There’s always a rest.”
Esther nodded.
“Yes.”
She placed the box on the table.
“There are letters from Rafael.”
Gabriel looked surprised.
“You kept them?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“All.”
Gabriel closed his eyes.
Alejandro looked at his mother.
“You want me to read these?”
“I want you to decide.”
That word mattered.
Decide.
Something she had denied him for decades.
She pushed the box toward him.
“If you burn them, I will understand.”
“If you read them, I will answer whatever you ask.”
Alejandro placed one hand on the lid.
Then withdrew it.
“Not today.”
Esther nodded.
For once, she did not argue.
The medical truth came next.
Dr. Serrano returned that afternoon.
In daylight.
Through the front door.
Alejandro met him in the library.
The doctor looked exactly like the man in the photograph.
That almost made Alejandro laugh.
“You caused one hell of a week.”
The doctor looked uncomfortable.
“I suspected that might happen eventually.”
“Did you know my mother was hiding my biological father?”
“I knew there were discrepancies in the history.”
“That's a very medical answer.”
“It is.”
Alejandro sat.
The doctor explained the translocation.
Balanced carriers could be entirely healthy.
Many never knew.
But reproductive risks could be substantial.
Embryos might inherit an unbalanced chromosome arrangement.
That could cause miscarriage or serious congenital problems.
Alejandro listened.
The two miscarriages suddenly had a biological explanation.
Possibly.
Not certainty.
The doctor emphasized that.
“Do not turn probability into guilt.”
Alejandro frowned.
“What?”
“You’re going to wonder whether you caused those losses.”
The doctor looked directly at him.
“You did not.”
“But my chromosomes…”
“Were not a choice.”
Silence.
“You did not cause grief by existing.”
Alejandro looked down.
That sentence echoed Gabriel’s words about him as an unborn child.
You had done nothing.
The doctor continued.
“The fetus appears to have inherited the same balanced arrangement you carry.”
“So my child may face this someday.”
“Yes.”