They Said I Was Adopted, but I Was Always the Real Daughter novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: That's for the Letters

My grandmother arrived at the transplant unit on a Thursday.

She carried a cane and a plastic grocery bag, and a bus ticket from Saltillo was still stuck to her coat.

She walked past the nurses' desk.

"I'm looking for Inés Cárdenas," she announced. "I'm her grandmother, I'm seventy-nine, and I haven't slept. Where is she?"

Gael, who was reading the visitor rules on the wall, stepped aside very fast.

I was sitting up in the bed with a mask on and my knit cap pulled low.

I'd had one brief phone call from Paulina the night before.

"I called Abuela," she'd said. "She wouldn't listen to me finish."

Now the door swung open, and there she was.

Rosalba Cárdenas is tiny and straight-backed, with a long white braid and eyes as black as olives.

She stopped at the foot of my bed and looked at me for a long time.

"They've shaved you," she said.

"Hi, Abuela."

"You're too thin. You look like your mother's cooking."

I laughed, and then I started crying, and she crossed the room faster than a woman with a cane should be able to and put her arms around me, mask and drip and all.

She smelled of lemon soap and bus seats.

"Mija," she said into my cap. "Mija, I'm so sorry. I wrote and wrote."

"I know," I said. "Paulina told me."

"Paulina is a good girl who did a bad thing for a very long time," my grandmother said. "That's a different matter. Let me look at you."

She held me at arm's length and examined my face.

Then she turned her head.

"And who is this tall boy?"

"Gael Montoya," said Gael. "I run the print shop. I'm her boss. And her friend. And her ride."

"Which of those is most of it?"

"I'm working on it, señora."

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