“I didn’t come to ask for forgiveness so I could feel like a good person,” she told me. “I came to tell you that I was a coward. They taught me to see you as a threat, and I accepted it because it benefited me.”
I looked at her, tired.
“That can’t be fixed with an apology.”
“I know.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To start by no longer lying.”
I didn’t hug her. Not yet. But I agreed to have coffee with her. Sometimes justice is not closing all the doors. Sometimes it is deciding which ones can be opened a little, carefully.
Iván took longer. He asked to meet me at an expensive restaurant, and I asked him to change it to a small fonda near my house. He arrived uncomfortable, as if he had never eaten at a table without a white tablecloth.
“I thought being cruel to you was being loyal to Dad,” he confessed.
“No, Iván. It was being cruel.”
He lowered his head.
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need you to pity me.”
“I don’t pity you. I admire you. You left that house and built a real life. I still don’t know who I am if I’m not Fernando Santillán’s son.”
That sentence was the first time I saw my brother without a mask.
