6.
LEONARDO VILLAR
Santa Serena is too far from S?o Paulo for a man who spends every mile thinking.
My flight lands in Belo Horizonte shortly after six.
I dismiss the driver Marcelo tried to arrange.
Rent a car instead.
I don’t want a company vehicle.
Security.
A lawyer beside me explaining what I can say and how I should say it.
For five years, that was how I handled Olívia.
As a legal problem.
This time, I need to face her as a man.
I’m not certain I remember how.
The folder sits closed on the passenger seat.
I don’t need to open it.
I know every page inside.
Manipulated messages.
Foundation money rerouted to pay for Henrique’s treatment.
A paternity test with no valid chain of custody.
A forged signature.
Photographs someone paid to have taken.
Five years.
The road cuts through the mountains.
At one point, I have to stop.
I pull onto the shoulder.
Get out.
The air is cold.
I brace both hands on the roof of the car.
My body is reacting to something I refuse to name.
Fear.
Not of Olívia.
Of what I might find.
Marcelo sent me basic information.
More than thirty employees and contractors tied to Recome?o.
Municipal projects.
Pediatric rehabilitation.
Regional awards.
Photographs.
I opened none of them.
The moment I saw her name linked to the clinic website, I closed the browser.
I don’t want to meet her first through a screen.
I want to see her.
It may be another stupid decision.
I have made enough of those.
My phone rings.
Catarina.
I decline.
It rings again.
Decline.
The third time, I answer.
“What?”
“Where are you?”
“None of your concern.”
“You canceled two meetings.”
“They’ll live.”
“You went after her.”
I say nothing.
“Leonardo, come back to S?o Paulo.”
“Why?”
“You are making a mistake.”
“Which one?”
“Digging all of this up again.”
“What are you afraid I’ll find?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Try again.”
Silence.
“Olívia lied to you.”
My grip tightens around the phone.
“The messages were altered.”
“We don’t know who did it.”
“The money never reached her.”
“She still could have been involved.”
“The paternity test is invalid.”
This time, Catarina takes too long.
“Who told you that?”
“Interesting question.”
“I’m trying to understand.”
“So am I.”
“And what are you going to do when you find her?”
I look out at the mountains.
“Listen.”
She laughs.
“You?”
“Shocking, I know.”
“That woman has always known how to make you lose your head.”
Anger hits.
I count silently.
One.
Two.
I don’t know why I start.
Maybe because, over the past few days, I have finally noticed that my reactions always arrive before my thoughts.
By five, I can speak.
“Stay away from Olívia.”
“Is that a threat?”
“It’s a warning.”
“I am still your family.”
The word doesn’t land the way she expects.
“So was Henrique.”
I hang up.
I reach Santa Serena close to nine.
Small town.
Quiet streets.
Marcelo booked a suite at an inn without asking me. For once, I appreciate his habit of anticipating everything.
I drop off my bag.
I do not go to the clinic.
It’s late.
I could obtain Olívia’s home address in minutes.
I don’t.
Some boundaries should exist before someone else has to force you to respect them.
I open my laptop.
Search for Recome?o.
This time, I enter the site.
There is a photograph of Olívia on the homepage.
Everything stops.
She is crouched beside several children.
Her hair is shorter.
Her face has changed.
Older.
Sharper somehow.
Still unmistakably hers.
The curve of her mouth.
Her hands.
The way she tilts her head when she listens.
No wedding ring.
I notice.
Immediately hate myself for noticing.
I enlarge the picture.
There are other people behind her.
A little girl appears in the background, partly hidden by one of the staff.
I barely register her.
I close the image.
Olívia built this.
During the same five years I spent living in the same apartment, repeating the same version of the past, she built an entire clinic.
My phone vibrates.
Marcelo.
“We found something else.”
“Go ahead.”
“The company created in Olívia’s name was opened using documents pulled from a Villar Foundation database.”
“Who had access?”
“A lot of people.”
“Catarina?”
“Yes.”
“My father?”
“Yes.”
“Henrique?”
“Yes.”
“Keep going.”
“The photographer who took the pictures of Olívia and Henrique was paid through an intermediary company.”
“Connected to whom?”
“We’re still tracing it.”
I close my eyes.
“And the test?”
“The laboratory confirmed the code attached to the sample listed as yours originally belonged to another patient.”
For a second, the room seems to drop beneath me.
“So it wasn’t my sample.”
“No.”
Absolute.
Final.
No.
Less than five percent probability.
I believed a paternity test performed using another man’s DNA.
Olívia is in front of me again.
You are the only man I’ve ever been with.
Test the baby after birth.
And I said no.
I never want to see you again.
My breathing turns heavy.
“Leonardo?”
“I’m here.”
“This still does not prove the baby was yours.”
The baby.
No.
Even that isn’t the word I used.
For five years, I called it the child.
Never son.
Never daughter.
Never baby.
The child.
Distance made grammatical.
“I know.”
“Do you want us to search birth records?”
My body locks.
If the baby was born.
If the baby survived.
Boy.
Girl.
Five years of questions I made a choice not to ask.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“That is Olívia’s story to tell.”
“If there are legal implications—”
“No.”
Marcelo falls silent.
“I’m speaking to her tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“And Marcelo?”
“Yes?”
“No calls to the clinic. No lawyers. No one goes near her before I do.”
“Understood.”
I end the call.
I don’t sleep.
At five thirty, I give up trying.
By seven, I’m dressed.
At seven forty, I leave the inn.
Recome?o opens at eight.
I arrive before then.
I sit in the car and stare at the renovated house.
Children arrive with parents.
Employees unlock doors.
A curly-haired woman opens the front windows.
No Olívia.
I wait.
At eight twenty, my phone rings.
Daniel.
I ignore it.
At eight thirty, sitting still becomes impossible.
I take the folder.
Get out.
Walk to the door.
I still don’t know what I’m going to say.
I’m sorry is insulting in its inadequacy.
I was wrong sounds almost obscene.
I destroyed you may be the first honest sentence I have.
My hand closes around the handle.
I don’t open the door.
Not yet.