Subject: Your responsibility.
Tomás called me immediately.
“Mariana, the deadline is Friday.”
“I know.”
“If it’s late, they’ll charge a penalty.”
“I know.”
“Diego could lose access to classes.”
“Then you need a plan.”
There was silence.
“You would really let that happen?”
I closed my eyes.
There it was: the old hook.
The guilt.
The implication that if I did not rescue them from the consequences of their own choices, I was cruel.
“Yes,” I said. “I would.”
He hung up.
Diego avoided me for two days.
On the third, I found him in the kitchen at midnight, eating cereal from the box, eyes red.
“I applied for jobs,” he said without looking at me.
“Good.”
“Nobody answered.”
“It takes time.”
He swallowed.
“My friends will find out.”
“That you work?”
“That I need money.”
I sat across from him.
“Diego, needing money is not shameful. Destroying someone’s property because you think they are beneath you is shameful.”
He looked down.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
He pressed his lips together.
“I think I hated you because it was easier than being mad at my dad.”
That was the first honest thing he had ever given me.
I waited.
He continued.
“When my mom died, everyone told me Dad was strong. Dad was suffering. Dad was doing his best. Then you came, and I thought if he smiled again, it meant he forgot her. So I decided you were the problem.”
His voice cracked.
“And then when I heard you telling him to close the business, I thought you were trying to take the last thing that made him look important.”
I felt the old ache rise.
Not forgiveness.
Recognition.
He had been a boy drowning in grief, and Tomás had let him build a raft out of lies.
“Your father is allowed to fail,” I said. “He is not allowed to make everyone else pay for pretending he didn’t.”
Diego nodded slowly.
“I’m sorry about the car.”
I looked at him.
“Thank you.”
“I’ll pay for it.”
“Yes, you will.”
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