Chapter 6 - The Son I Never Knew
The boy was four years old.
Do the math.
I did it a hundred times before the jet landed in Switzerland.
Isabel had been pregnant when our car went over that guardrail.
I remembered the weeks before the crash differently now. She had been tired. She stopped drinking wine. Once, at breakfast, I found her smiling at nothing.
“Why are you happy?” I’d asked.
“You’ll find out soon.”
I never did.
Until now.
The clinic outside Zurich sat behind cedar trees and privacy walls. The director, Dr. Annika Weiss, met us in a conference room.
“Her name here was Elena Cruz,” she said.
“Her name is Isabel Navarro.”
“She arrived without documentation. The transfer physician claimed she had been found after an accident.”
“Rafael Romero?”
Dr. Weiss hesitated.
“I never met him.”
“Did someone pay?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A foundation.”
Sebastián slid a document across the table.
“Romero Cultural Trust.”
Dr. Weiss’s face answered before her mouth did.
“Tell me about the child.”
She looked genuinely distressed.
“Isabel gave birth approximately seven months after admission. A boy. Healthy.”
My hands tightened on the table.
“My son.”
“If the dates are correct, possibly.”
“What did she name him?”
“Gabriel.”
I looked away.
My father’s name.
Isabel had remembered enough to choose it.
“When did her memory return?”
“In pieces. About two years ago she began recalling Barcelona. Your name came later.”
“Then why didn’t she contact me?”
Dr. Weiss hesitated.
“She believed you were dead.”
Sebastián swore quietly.
“Who told her?”
“Her records stated you died in the same accident.”
My anger became something colder than rage.
Rafael hadn’t merely taken my legs.
He stole years.
A fiancée.
A pregnancy.
A child’s first word.
First birthday.
First steps.
The irony was almost cruel.
I was learning to walk while discovering my son had already spent years doing it without me.
“Where did she go?”
“We don’t know. She became frightened after receiving a photograph.”
“What photograph?”
Dr. Weiss opened a file.
It showed Isabel and Gabriel walking through a park.
Taken secretly.
On the back:
Stay dead if you want him alive.
I knew the handwriting.
Félix.
By evening, investigators traced a train ticket to Marseille. Then a ferry purchase under Isabel’s alias.
Destination: Barcelona.
“She came back?” I asked.
Javier nodded.
“Eight months ago.”
“Where is she?”
“We’re searching.”
I returned home three days later and found Sofia sitting on the front steps with Gabriel.
At least, that was how it felt.
In reality, he was a small dark-haired boy hiding behind a woman in a gray coat.
Isabel.
I stopped breathing.
My hands locked around the handles of my walker.
I had insisted on walking from the car.
Ten feet.
That was my daily record.
Suddenly it might as well have been ten miles.
Isabel looked exactly like herself and nothing like the woman I remembered. Thinner. Older around the eyes. A scar along her temple.
“Alejandro?”
Her voice shattered five years in one word.
I tried to answer.
Nothing came.
Sofia stood nearby, smiling through tears.
“I found her.”
Lucía quickly corrected, “The police found her.”
“I helped.”
I laughed and cried at the same time.
Isabel looked at my walker.
“They told me you couldn’t…”
“I’m working on it.”
Then Gabriel peeked from behind her coat.
He had my eyes.
There was no need for a test.
I knew.
Isabel knelt.
“Gabriel, this is Alejandro.”
The boy studied me.
“Is he the man from the picture?”
“Yes.”
“What picture?” I asked.
Isabel pulled a folded photograph from her pocket.
It showed me at twenty-eight, standing on a beach with her.
Gabriel looked at me.
“Mamá says you’re my father.”
My legs nearly gave out.
I lowered myself onto a bench.
“Yes.”
“Where were you?”
There are questions children ask that armies cannot defend against.
I swallowed.
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“Did you look?”
“Every day, without knowing who I was looking for.”
He considered that.
Then he pointed to my walker.
“Did you get hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Can you run?”
“Not yet.”
“I can.”
“I bet you can.”
He stepped closer.
“You want me to teach you?”
I laughed.
Behind him, Sofia crossed her arms proudly.
“I already am.”
Gabriel looked at her.
“You’re bossy.”
“I know.”
For the first time in five years, Isabel smiled exactly as I remembered.
But the reunion lasted less than twenty minutes.
Javier’s phone rang.
His expression changed.
“What?”
He moved away, then returned.
“Rafael escaped during a prison transfer.”
Isabel went white.
“No.”
I stood instinctively, gripping the walker.
Javier continued.
“There’s more.”
He handed me a photograph sent anonymously minutes earlier.
It showed my mansion.
Taken from outside the gates.
Across the bottom was a message.
You took everything from me. Now I take the boy.
Gabriel looked up at me.
“Dad?”
May you like
It was the first time he called me that.
And Rafael had just made the worst mistake of his life.
