Chapter 3 - The Drawing
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The drive back to their townhouse in the city was agonizingly quiet. The rhythm of the windshield wipers slapping against the heavy rain was the only sound inside the warm cabin. Mauricio checked the rearview mirror constantly, watching as Renata finally succumbed to exhaustion, her head lolling to the side, fast asleep.
When he pulled into their driveway, he carried her inside without waking her. He carefully removed her damp shoes, tucked her under the heavy down comforter of her bed, and kissed her forehead.
She looked so peaceful, so fragile. The sheer cruelty of what his parents had done burned in his chest like battery acid.
Mauricio walked downstairs into his dimly lit living room, shrugging off his wet overcoat. As he draped it over the back of an armchair, he felt a strange crinkle in the right pocket.
He frowned, reaching his hand inside. He pulled out a folded piece of thick construction paper.
He sat down on the edge of the sofa and carefully unfolded it under the warm light of the reading lamp.
It was a drawing. Rendered in bright, heavy strokes of crayon, it depicted a small family. There was a tall man with dark hair—obviously Mauricio—holding the hand of a little girl with a big, jagged smile.
But standing on the other side of the little girl was a third figure.
It was a woman. She was drawn in sharp, urgent strokes of crimson and black. She had long, flowing hair and a strange, distinctive symbol drawn across her chest—a jagged crescent moon overlapping a diamond.
Mauricio stared at the drawing, a cold shiver running down his spine. Renata had never drawn a mother figure before. Since the day he brought her home from the agency, it had always been just the two of them in every picture she created.
He turned the paper over. On the back, written in the shaky, uneven handwriting of a six-year-old, were four words.
She is watching us.
Mauricio's breath caught in his throat. He looked toward the darkened staircase leading up to Renata's room. He had assumed his mother had slipped the drawing into his pocket, or perhaps one of his nieces. But the handwriting was undeniably Renata's.
Why would she draw a woman with a strange symbol? And why would she hide it in his coat pocket instead of giving it to him directly?
His mind raced, searching for logical explanations. A character from a cartoon? A story his mother had told her to scare her?
But as he stared at the crescent moon and diamond, a distant, terrifying memory flickered at the edge of his consciousness. He had seen that symbol before. Not in a child's book, and not on television.
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He had seen it deeply engraved into a gold signet ring on his father's desk, years ago, right before his father had violently demanded he never enter the home office again.
The drawing wasn't just a child's imagination. It was a warning. And it was deeply, violently connected to the unopened envelope currently sitting on the mahogany desk in his study.
