Chapter 22: Abuela's Box

At two o'clock the judge dismissed the charge against me.

The prosecutor stood up, red to the ears, and said the state no longer wished to proceed.

The two guards had given sworn statements at noon.

My public defender hugged me in front of the bench, and the judge pretended not to see.

At four, I stood in the basement of a downtown bank with a key on a blue ribbon.

Joaquin was on my left.

On my right stood Beto, in his tight suit, and the trust lawyer, who had not stopped smiling since the boardroom.

A manager with a gray mustache led us down a corridor of steel drawers.

"Box 412," he said. "Your grandmother rented it for thirty-one years."

He turned his key and I turned mine.

The drawer slid out with a long metal sound.

Inside lay a flat leather case, a thick envelope and a photograph.

I picked up the photograph first.

It showed a small girl in a yellow dress, five years old, on a woman's lap.

The woman wore her gray hair in a braid, and she was laughing at the camera.

The girl was me.

"Oh," I said.

Beto cleared his throat loudly and turned to look at a wall.

I put the photograph in my pocket.

The envelope had my name on it, in handwriting that slanted to the right.

I opened it standing up.

Mi Dalia,

If you are reading this, I am gone, and somebody who loves you found the key.

I hope it was not Renata.

I have watched your mother for twenty years.

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