I
Nicolás was suffocating inside his little Toyota with no air conditioning, which he was still paying off in “easy” installments that threatened to keep him broke long before his daughter turned ten.
The traffic at that hour was unbearable, especially in that area.
The private schools—La Salle, Saint Andrews, and San Marcos—sat one after the other along the narrow Avenida Arequipa.
Dismissal time was a hellish mess of ridiculously expensive cars. Not a single one was driven by its real owner, but by some chauffeur or employee sent to do the job no other parent seemed bothered to fulfill.
The sun burned high in a cloudless sky, indifferent to the mortal suffering of people coming and going, roasting like ants under a sadistic, bored child’s magnifying glass.
He had the windows thrown wide open, but not the slightest hint of a breeze took pity on him.
He could not remember ever feeling more uncomfortable than being trapped in that ridiculous and endless wait to pick up his daughter and talk to that irritating teacher. She had spent the last few months trying to drag him to the school at any cost.
“Yes, Mr. Gareca, as I told you before, I would love to have a conversation with you soon. Your daughter’s academic performance is extraordinary, but she has been having a lot of trouble making friends and relating to her classmates, and she does not seem to get along with any teacher. She always questions and disobeys.”
He could almost recite by heart the worn-out speech with which she greeted him every morning he dropped his daughter off at school.
God, is no one going to move? Are we going to sit parked here forever? He thought in frustration.
He was not used to that maddening experience. That was precisely why he had paid for the school bus service to take his daughter home while he was still at work.
He worked endless overtime hours to be able to pay for that damn bus, the sky-high school fees, scholarship or no scholarship, and to try to put a decent plate of food in front of his daughter’s big, smiling eyes.
But that day he had no choice. On the other end of the line, it was no longer the same grating, squeaky voice she used with the children. This time he heard the teacher with an adult, clearly worried voice. Even scared.
“Mr. Gareca, this is Ms. Susana. You need to come immediately. Something terrible has happened. I can’t explain it over the phone, but it’s urgent.”
“Is Sofía okay? Did something happen to her?” he asked, raising his voice.
“She is fine; nothing has happened to her. But she had an incident with other students.”
“Incident?”
“Yes, there’s been an unfortunate accident. Do you remember how I asked you countless times to talk about her? How hard it is for her to relate to the other kids?”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with anything now,” he replied, irritated by the teacher’s insistence on that topic and by how accusatory her tone felt to him, as if to say: I told you, this could have been avoided. “What accident are you talking about?”
“Come immediately. The children have suffered serious injuries. They were taken to the hospital. Hurry, please.”
He kept replaying the brief conversation in his mind while the traffic crept forward a few inches and then stopped again. He turned off the engine to save a little gas during the wait that felt endless.
His eyes were fixed on the glove compartment, on those documents he had gone to fetch more than a month ago and had not dared to open since the day of his visit to the orphanage.
He could not muster the courage to face the hidden truths about his daughter he might be ignoring, and that might be too much for his exhausted mind. Or, on the other hand, that he would find nothing relevant at all and would have to face the situation completely blind.
The cars lurched forward again, and the blaring honk of a huge black Ford SUV behind his car jolted him out of his reverie.
He started the engine and crawled ahead until he reached the shiny red Mazda in front, which blinded him with the incandescent flashes of sunlight reflected in its immaculate metallic paint.
When they stopped again, and he shut off the engine, he gathered a little courage and opened the glove compartment.
The large manila envelope was still exactly where he had left it, wrinkled from all the times he had pulled it out and handled it without daring to explore the contents. Only to put it back in the same hiding place.
He took it with trembling hands, pulled out the folder inside that contained all the documents and had his daughter’s name on one end. He opened it and spilled several papers onto the passenger seat.
He stared at them while his mind drifted through memories of his daughter, of “peculiar” experiences that had stopped his heart cold and to which he could never attribute any explanation besides his exhaustion and lack of sleep making him see things that were not there.
But at that moment, in the blistering heat of a cloudless day, with a merciless sun overhead, he felt a chill run down his back as he broke into a cold sweat.
Could it be that she hurt someone again? He thought.
Hundreds of memories swirled in his mind, darkening his thoughts and stirring an irrational fear inside him. That his daughter had been capable of hurting another child and that he, as her father and protector, did not know what to do.
He had already changed her school three times for minor problems: spats with other students, difficulty socializing with her classmates, getting so distracted in class that she would leave the room for no apparent reason, even causing damage to school property.
And then for the accident that happened that November. But that was all it was, an accident. He did not want to think about it.
He had never received a call from a teacher this frightened because Sofía had directly harmed another classmate.
“Your daughter is the devil!” he had clearly heard the woman he hired to clean his house and watch Sofi shout. “I saw her in her room, she was flying like she was possessed. She’s a demon.”
“What are you talking about, Maribel? Are you crazy?”
“I saw her when I went into her room. Her bed was floating and she was on top of it. Her things were flying around too. That’s not normal, that’s the devil’s work.”
What a scene that girl made in the neighborhood as she stumbled out of his house, cursing, crossing herself nonstop, and shouting to the four winds that his daughter was possessed by a demon.
Stupid, superstitious woman, he thought bitterly. How could a creature so small, so innocent, and so beautiful be evil?
She reminded him so much of his wife, even though he knew any physical resemblance was impossible. But that was how it was.
Her eyes were big and full of determination and curiosity, brown like fine mahogany furniture. The only difference from his wife’s eyes were the faint, barely noticeable greenish flecks.
Her hair was just as unruly, with tight curls that made it look as if she wore a nest on her head like a hat, but Sofi’s was a caramel blonde, while his wife’s had been a dark chestnut.
Nicolás adored his daughter and would do anything to protect her and raise her properly. But he admitted that on several occasions the responsibility of being a father slipped from his grasp and he did not quite know how to proceed, especially when an “accident” occurred.
Another honk, followed by a wave of unintelligible shouting from the driver of the SUV behind him.
He started the engine and continued inching forward. This time he forgot to cut the ignition and sat in silence, staring at the hood of his car, hypnotized by the steady hum of the engine. His mind kept running back to his daughter.
He kept up the slow crawl toward the school, simmering inside his car, with another headache looming on the horizon. He could not stop looking at the documents scattered on the passenger seat. After taking a deep breath to brace himself, he gathered them up, still troubled by the countless memories and accounts related to his daughter throughout her short nine years of life.
The first page he picked up was Sofía’s medical record, written by a nurse at the time of her admittance. He had already seen similar copies; they were given as part of the adoption paperwork. But this one was older, and, of course, it made him curious to compare it with the information he already knew by heart.
The first important discovery was in the name, since it bore her mother’s surname, which he had not known until that moment. His daughter’s official name was Sofía Martínez. It made an impression on him to learn that detail, but it also stirred a feeling of pity, thinking of the girl’s biological parents and of his wife, Carissa.
His now late wife had told him about that orphanage where she herself had spent the first years of her life. There she had met Fiorella, who would become her best friend in childhood and for life until they grew apart after going to college. She was Sofía’s biological mother, but she had never mentioned her last name.
He kept reading, without seeing anything else noteworthy. Blood type, allergies, vaccines—he already knew all that information. Not quite sure what he expected to find, he was about to set that first document aside.
He was surprised to find a section listing the mother’s medical history and examined it carefully, without understanding half of what was written there. He came across an entirely new detail that made him feel sick and left him gaping. Plunged into such confusion, the new round of honking from the black SUV could not snap him back to the real world.
He discovered that his wife had lied to him for years. Fiorella, her friend, Sofía’s biological mother, had not died in childbirth as she had told him, which had been the perfect excuse to convince him to go ahead with adopting the girl.
Instead, she had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital very close to where they lived. The document indicated that a few months after having the baby, she had tried to hurt her and likely get rid of her. That was why she was admitted in to that institution.
Could Fiorella be alive? He thought, running a trembling hand over his face to wipe away the sweat.
He could not have said how he started his car once again, maneuvered through the gates that led to the school parking lot, and parked in one of the available spaces, crooked across the painted lines.
When he finally got out, he noticed the sky had filled with dark storm clouds and it had begun to rain.
Surely his daughter was sad and scared, and the weather, as always, shared those feelings.
