I sat up slowly and rubbed my eyes. On the chair beside the bed was my small suitcase; on top of it, the photograph. I picked it up and studied it carefully. Her smile. My younger face, tanned by the sun, my hands holding her ankles like she was the most fragile treasure in the world.
“I did my best,” I murmured.
That morning, after a simple breakfast in the hostel’s common room, I walked to the small café across the street. I ordered coffee, nothing else, and settled by the window. The outside world moved as usual—people rushing to work, buses passing, someone walking a dog, a teenager laughing into their phone. It was strange, how normal everything looked. How indifferent life could be to individual tragedies.
I pulled out my phone. There were a few unread messages—condolences, mostly. Some from old friends. A brief one from a cousin. One from an unknown number that turned out to be a florist confirming a delivery that had probably already arrived at the cemetery too late.
I replied to none of them.
Instead, I scrolled down to a familiar contact: my lawyer.
It wasn’t an impulsive decision. The truth was, everything had been decided long ago, in meetings that Daniel had attended but never truly paid attention to, signing papers with the absent-minded impatience of a man who considers the details beneath him. I had remained in the background because Laura wanted peace, not war. She had always said, “Dad, please, just… don’t make things harder. He’s trying, he’s just stressed. Let me handle it.”
I had kept my distance out of respect for her wishes.
But Laura was no longer here to stand between us.
I dialed the number and pressed the phone to my ear.
“Antonio,” came the familiar voice, warm and slightly surprised. “I was about to call you. I heard about Laura. I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you,” I replied. “I appreciate it.”
There was a pause. The lawyer cleared his throat gently.
“What can I do for you?” he asked.
I looked at my coffee, at the swirl of steam rising from the dark surface.
“I need to review the company structure,” I said quietly. “And I think… it’s time we reminded Daniel of a few details he seems to have forgotten.”
A week later, as I calmly drank my morning coffee in the same café, Daniel’s phone rang.
He wasn’t with me, of course. But I could picture it clearly, almost as if I’d been sitting across from him. I could imagine the exact way he would reach into his pocket, the slight frown on his forehead as he glanced at the caller ID, the automatic expectation that whatever the call was, it would bend to his will like everything else.
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