Chapter 3 - THE LETTERS UNDER THE FLOORBOARDS
Amalia did not give Lucía the address immediately.
She insisted on making copies of every letter and photograph first. Mateo helped her arrange the papers by date while Lucía stood beside the worktable, reading the labels on the envelopes.
The earliest letters were addressed to Clara at the clinic where she had been sent after giving birth. The later ones were addressed to different towns: León, Burgos, Santander, and finally a small coastal village in Galicia.
Most were returned unopened.
A few had been opened and resealed.
One had a red stamp across the front: ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
"Who sent these?" Lucía asked.
"Clara," Amalia replied. "She wrote whenever she learned a new address for Beatriz or your grandparents. She wanted to know whether you were well."
"Did Beatriz answer?"
"Sometimes."
Lucía found a letter dated six months after her birth. The paper was thin and creased.
Beatriz,
I am not asking you to give her back. I know you are the one who can keep her safe. I only want to know whether she is alive. Tell me whether she has dark hair. Tell me whether she cries when she is hungry. Tell me whether she sleeps with her hands closed.
I dream about her every night.
Please don't let our father make her a ghost.
Clara.
Lucía read it twice. The words blurred.
"She knew I was alive."
Amalia nodded. "By then, yes."
"How?"
"Beatriz sent her one photograph. Only one. It was taken when you were three months old."
Lucía looked up sharply. "Beatriz sent a photograph, then told her not to contact me?"
"She sent it because Clara was desperate. But your grandfather found out. He threatened to have you removed from Beatriz's care. After that, Beatriz stopped writing."
Mateo took the letter gently from Lucía's hand and placed it on the table.
"Did Clara ever come looking in person?"
"Once. When you were five."
Lucía's breath caught.
"She came to our house?"
"She stood across the street for two days. She saw you playing in the garden. She wanted to approach, but Beatriz came outside and asked her to leave."
Lucía remembered the garden. She remembered a woman watching from the iron gate, though Beatriz had told her it was a neighbor waiting for a taxi.
"Was that Clara?"
Amalia nodded.
Lucía closed her eyes.
She had been five years old. She had been wearing a yellow dress and carrying a plastic watering can. She remembered waving at a woman across the street. The woman had waved back, then turned away with her hand over her mouth.
Lucía had asked Beatriz who she was.
"Someone who has the wrong house," Beatriz had said.
The memory came back so clearly that Lucía felt the old garden beneath her feet.
"Why did nobody tell me?"
"Because your grandfather was still alive. He had people watching the family. Beatriz believed that if Clara came close, he would use you against both of them."
"And after he died?"
Amalia lowered her head.
"Your grandmother continued the lie. Beatriz was afraid that if she told you, you would go searching for Clara and discover how much had been hidden."
Lucía laughed bitterly.
"So she kept me ignorant because I might discover that I was ignorant."
Amalia had no answer.
Mateo asked about the final envelope. It was sealed with dark red wax and marked only with the letter C.
Amalia hesitated before handing it over.
"Clara left this with me. She said I should give it to you if you ever came asking about the dress."
Lucía broke the seal.
Inside was a single page.
My little girl,
If you are reading this, then the lilies have finally found you.
I do not know what name they gave you. I do not know what you look like now. I have imagined you with every age: a toddler with scraped knees, a girl with books under her arm, a young woman who laughs with her whole face.
I made the flowers because I wanted you to have something from me that no one could take away. If you ever wear them, I hope you know that I did not forget you for one day.
I was told you had died. Then I was told you were alive but could never know me. I have been asked to choose between your safety and my own happiness. I chose your safety, even when I was not sure it was the right choice.
I have no right to demand that you love me. I only ask that you let me tell you the truth if we ever meet.
Your first mother,
Clara.
Lucía lowered the page.
She did not cry immediately. She felt too much anger for tears.
"She called herself my first mother."
"She was," Amalia said.
"Beatriz is the woman who raised me."
"Yes."
"Both of them made decisions about my life without asking me."
Amalia nodded.
"That is true."
Lucía turned toward Mateo.
"I need to see her."
He did not ask which woman she meant.
"Then we'll go."
Amalia finally gave them the address. It was a small house outside a village near the Galician coast. The last letter had been written three years earlier, but the postmark suggested Clara had remained in the area.
Before they left, Amalia gave Lucía a copy of the hospital bracelet and the photograph of the newborn.
"Keep these safe."
Lucía slipped them into her handbag.
"Thank you."
Amalia touched her sleeve.
"One more thing. Your grandfather did not act alone. There was a doctor at the clinic who signed the death certificate. His name was Dr. Salvatierra. He is still alive."
"Why does that matter?"
"Because he knows what happened to you after the birth. He may be the only person who can explain how the records were changed."
Lucía looked at Mateo.
"We'll find him."
The drive to Galicia took most of the day. The landscape changed from dry fields to green hills, and the air grew damp as they approached the coast. Lucía barely spoke. She kept the letter on her lap and read it again whenever Mateo stopped for fuel.
At dusk, they reached the village.
The house stood at the end of a narrow lane, behind a low stone wall. Its windows were lit. A small garden stretched along the front, full of white lilies.
Lucía stepped out of the car.
Her hands were shaking.
Mateo came around to her side.
"Do you want me to knock?"
"No."
She walked to the gate and pushed it open.
A woman appeared in the doorway.
She was in her early fifties, with dark hair streaked with silver and a face that looked painfully familiar. She held a watering can in one hand.
For several seconds, neither woman moved.
Then the watering can slipped from Clara's fingers and struck the stone path.
"Lucía?" she whispered.
Lucía's throat closed.
"How do you know my name?"
Clara took one step forward, then stopped as if afraid she might frighten her.
"Because I have said it every night for twenty-seven years."
Lucía looked at the white lilies in the garden.
Then at the woman who had embroidered them before she was born.
"Are you Clara?"
The woman nodded.
Lucía wanted to run into her arms.
She also wanted to demand why she had stayed away.
Instead, she stood at the gate and said the only thing she could manage.
"Tell me everything."
Clara began to cry.
"Come inside, my daughter."
Lucía did not move.
"Don't call me that yet."
Clara pressed a hand to her mouth and nodded.
"All right," she whispered. "I'll wait."
That answer hurt more than Lucía expected.
It was the first time anyone in her family had allowed her to decide what happened next.
Amalia made coffee while Mateo photographed the documents one by one. She insisted that each page be photographed beside a handwritten note showing the date and the order in which it had been found. She had learned, she said, that family stories could be altered, but a careful record was harder to dismiss.
Lucía asked whether the letters had ever been shown to a lawyer.
"Once," Amalia replied. "A solicitor in León told Clara that proving the child was alive would be difficult if the hospital record said otherwise. He advised her to obtain a copy of the original birth notes. She tried, but the clinic refused."
"Could he have helped?"
"He could have tried harder."
Lucía looked at the growing stack of photographs.
"Everyone seems to have had a reason not to do the right thing."
Amalia did not defend them. "Fear is a reason people use. It is not always an excuse."
Before they left, Lucía asked Amalia to write down everything she remembered about the clinic, the nurse, and the people who had taken the baby. Amalia filled three pages. She included names, dates, and details she had not mentioned aloud: a blue car outside the rear entrance, a nurse who had cried in the corridor, and a second doctor who had refused to sign the death record.
"Why didn't you tell me about the second doctor?" Lucía asked.
"I wanted to be certain you were ready to hear how many people were involved."
Lucía folded the pages.
"I may never feel ready. Tell me anyway."
May you like
Amalia nodded. "Then I will."
As Lucía and Mateo walked back to the car, she looked once more at the atelier's sign. ALBA 27. The number no longer seemed like a business name. It felt like a marker placed beside a grave that had never contained a body.
