Chapter 25
The brown envelope had been sitting on my desk for almost ten minutes, but I still hadn’t found the courage to touch it.
Leandro Nunes, the private investigator who had worked for the Vasconcelos family for over fifteen years, was sitting across from me.
He kept his hands clasped in his lap and wore a cautious expression, as if he knew that the contents of those photographs were powerful enough to destroy what little sanity I had left.
The office blinds were partially closed, preventing the gray afternoon light from completely flooding the room.
On the desk, reports from the construction company were piling up, and I hadn’t managed to read a single line.
My mother was dead. My wife had disappeared.
The investigation that was supposed to prove Maria Rita’s guilt was falling apart with every new analysis, while one of the country’s leading criminal defense attorneys was defending her innocence without charging a penny.
I could no longer hide behind my grief.
The possibility that I had convicted an innocent woman was no longer a distant doubt; it had become a living presence, sitting before me, breathing the same air, and waiting for me to open that envelope.
“Did you find her?” I rested my forearms on the table, keeping my eyes on the brown paper, because looking the investigator in the eye would require a resolve I no longer possessed.
“I found her, Mr. Vasconcelos.” Leandro leaned forward slightly, emphasizing the gravity of what he was about to reveal. “Your wife is, apparently, safe.”
The air left my lungs in a long, shaky exhale.
I closed my eyes for a few seconds, allowing relief to seep through the cracks in my chest. Ever since the night I cast her out, my mind had conjured up hundreds of fates for her, all of them cruel.
I had imagined her lying on a sidewalk, shivering from the cold, attacked by some stranger, or being taken to a morgue with no documents to identify her.
No matter how much I told myself she was a murderer and deserved to pay for her crime, a part of me never stopped looking for her in the faces of the women abandoned under the awnings.
With every news report about a body found, my heart would race.
With every siren or unexpected phone call in the early hours of the morning, I braced myself to hear that the woman I had promised to protect had died after I ordered the gates locked in her face.
The realization that she was safe should have brought me peace, but the relief was quickly replaced by suffocating shame. She survived in spite of me, not because of me.
“Where is she?” I reached for the envelope, but my fingers stopped short of the edge. “Is she in a shelter? Has she been on the streets these past few days?”
Leandro looked away, uncomfortable.
“I wasn’t able to piece together her entire route, but I found out that she was initially taken in by Abrigo das Marias. She stayed there for a few days. Then Henrique Ferraz and his wife took her to their home.”
My stomach clenched. A shelter for abandoned women…
The wife of one of the richest men in S?o Paulo had to rely on the charity of strangers to eat, bathe, and have a place to sleep.
Meanwhile, I stayed in the mansion, drinking whiskey by the fireplace and ordering that everything that belonged to her be burned.
I brought my hand to my face, pressing the bridge of my nose in a futile attempt to contain the pain throbbing behind my eyes.
“How long was she on the street?” The question scratched at my throat, coming out so quietly that I barely recognized it.
“At least one night. Maybe longer.” Leandro held my gaze, without softening the truth.
“A woman named Rosa found her near a diner. She gave her food and directed her to the shelter. I spoke discreetly with some people in the area. When she arrived there, Mrs. Vasconcelos was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the night Dona Eleonora died. ”
My blood ran cold.
The same clothes.
The torn dress stained with my mother’s blood. The thin fabric clinging to her body from the rain. Her feet stumbled over the stones as the security guards carried out my order and dragged her onto the sidewalk.
I had watched it all…
I could have stopped it. All it would have taken was a word. A gesture. A single shred of humanity. But I stood motionless under the shelter of the porch, while the woman who loved me was swallowed up by the storm.
“Was she starving?” The question caught in my throat, turning into a blade before it left my lips.
“Yes.” Leandro lowered his eyes for a moment. “The woman at the diner said she ate like someone who hadn’t eaten in hours.”
I stood up abruptly, shoving the chair back. It slammed against the bookcase, causing a crash that reverberated through the office, but I didn’t care. I walked over to the window and pressed my hands against the cold glass, trying to control the nausea.
Maria Rita knew what hunger was like. She had told me about the droughts in the sert?o, about the nights when her father pretended not to be hungry so he could share the little food they had among his children. I had promised her she would never have to go through that again.
Then I turned out to be the very man who condemned her to relive the worst moment of her childhood.
“Why didn’t she go to the police?” I kept my gaze fixed on the city, watching the tiny cars move along the avenue. “Why didn’t she turn to the family’s lawyers or use her wedding ring to get money?”
“Because she was afraid of being arrested, and from what I’ve found out, she considered selling the wedding ring to return to the Northeast, but realized that leaving the state could be interpreted as fleeing.
” Leandro paused before continuing. “She didn’t try to sell the story to the press.
She didn’t contact any journalists. Nor did she withdraw any money, use a credit card, threaten to sue the family, or try to contact you. ”
Each piece of information tore away a fragment of the narrative I had clung to.
A con artist wouldn’t turn down money. A woman who had killed to control a fortune wouldn’t go hungry with a gold wedding ring in her pocket.
A murderer wouldn’t voluntarily walk into a police station accompanied by a lawyer willing to defend her innocence.
I had created a monster to cope with my mother’s death; I gave it the face of the only woman who loved me without demanding anything in return, and I used my family’s power to crush her.
I turned slowly.
“What’s in the envelope?”
Leandro glanced at the brown paper.
“Photographs from the last two days. I followed Henrique Ferraz’s car after they left the police station. I found out where his wife is living, and confirmed that she doesn’t appear to be under duress. She spends almost all her time with Aline and the couple’s daughter.”
“Did you go onto the property?” I stepped away from the window, feeling my protective instinct mingle with guilt.
“No. I kept my distance and didn’t make contact.”
“Did she realize she was being followed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“This ends now.” I rested my hands on the table and leaned toward him, overcome by an urgency that made my muscles tense.
“Remove any men who are watching the house. No one gets near her, no one takes any more photographs, and no one tries to figure out her routine. If Maria Rita realizes she’s being watched, she’ll think I intend to harass her or take some action against her. ”
Leandro nodded, but his eyes flashed briefly with surprise.
The Eduardo Vasconcelos he knew didn’t back down after ordering an investigation.
He didn’t respect boundaries when he wanted an answer.
However, I was beginning to understand that my need for control had been one of the weapons used to destroy Maria Rita.
“The men will be withdrawn immediately.” Leandro stood up and buttoned his jacket. “In the meantime, I recommend that you look at the photographs. There’s important information in them.”
He took his leave with a discreet gesture and left the office. The click of the door condemned me to solitude in front of the envelope.
I sat down again. This time, I reached out and broke the seal.
There were just over a dozen photographs.
In the first one, Maria Rita appeared in the back seat of Henrique’s car, her face partially hidden by the glass.
In the second, she was getting out in front of a two-story house, wearing loose pants and a wool blouse that certainly belonged to someone else.
My heart sank when I noticed how thin she was.
Her cheeks had lost their delicately rounded appearance.
Her skin looked pale, and there were deep shadows under her eyes.
Even so, she held her chin high. Gone was the desperate fragility of the woman who had crawled at my feet.
The Maria Rita in these photographs exuded a quiet strength that I had never been able to recognize while she was still living by my side.
I moved on to the next image. She was in the small garden of the house, holding a baby in her arms. The child was clutching a lock of her hair, and Maria Rita was smiling.
That smile pierced my heart violently. It was small and still carried sadness, but it was genuine. Someone had managed to bring back a little light to the woman I had left in the darkness. Another family had offered the shelter, care, and security that should have come from me.
My fingers traced the outline of her face on the glossy paper.
“My Maria…” The name slipped out before I could stop it, laden with the longing that had been consuming me since the night of the tragedy.
I turned over another photograph.
Maria Rita and Aline entered a clinic. The silver plaque by the door displayed the doctor’s name and, just below it, her specialty: obstetrics and fetal medicine.
The entire office seemed to tilt.