They were neatly arranged in stacks, secured with rubber bands. Each package had a small note with the date.
August.
September.
October.
They were there every month.
I looked at him.
“Did you keep them?”
“Yeah.”
“Because?”
He moved the chair that was in front of me and sat down in it.
“You paid on time.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t.”
My hands started to tremble.
For three years I lived in fear that he might cash all the checks at once.
He had counted that money over and over again.
I was worried that a single mistake could destroy the little stability that Trixie and I had managed to build.
I pushed the box towards him.
“Mr. Alvarez, I need you to explain this to me.”
He studied the table.
Then he said, “My daughter’s name was Sofia.”
I stopped moving.
He nodded his head towards the wall.
The woman who appeared next to him in several photographs was not his wife.
Now I could see it.
She had her eyes and the same serious mouth.
“I had a little girl,” she continued. “Her name was Camila.”
Wait.
“Sofia married young. At first, the man was charming. Everyone liked him.”
He clenched his jaw.
“Then he started controlling everything. Her money. Her clothes. Her friends. He made sure she had nowhere to go.”
My anger faded away.
Mr. Alvarez rubbed his thumb against the scar on his hand.
“She called me once,” she said. “She asked if she and Camila could stay here.”
“What did you say?”
She closed her eyes for a moment.
“I told her to go home and sort things out with her husband.”
The clock kept ticking.
I could barely breathe.
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because she was stubborn. Because she thought marriage was a promise to be kept, even when it hurt.”
Her voice broke on the last word.
I looked at the photographs again.
What happened to them?
He did not respond immediately.
When he finally looked at me, the truth was already reflected in his face.
“They died in a car accident six weeks later.”
I covered my mouth.
“He was driving,” Mr. Alvarez added. “He had been drinking.”
The room seemed to shrink around us.
“Very sorry.”
He nodded once, but his expression did not change.
“I had some money saved. Not a lot, but enough to help her. I had this apartment. I had a spare room in the house. She asked me for help, and I sent her back.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“I knew she was afraid.”
His answer was blunt.
Then his shoulders shrugged.
“That should have been enough.”
I looked at the checks.
The first one was dated three years earlier.
I remembered the woman I had been back then.
I remembered hiding in the bathroom so Trixie wouldn’t see me cry.
He remembered having to choose between gasoline and food.
She remembered feeling ashamed of every need.
Mr. Alvarez clasped his hands together.
“When you arrived here, you had the same look that Sofia had that day.”
“What gaze?”
“As if you were trying not to ask for too much.”
My eyes filled with tears.
He continued before I could speak.
