Mrs. Elena felt the world tilt. She leaned against the doorframe to keep from collapsing.
—“Your sister?” she whispered. “What was her name?”
Daniel swallowed.
—“Sofía.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Cars, voices, even birds seemed to vanish. Elena felt her legs give way. Eight years of prayers, searches, and sleepless nights crashed into that single word.
—“Where… where is she?” she asked in a thread of a voice.
Daniel asked to sit down. Elena ushered them into the bakery. She offered water, but her hands trembled so badly that he took the pitcher and poured it himself.
Daniel began to speak slowly, like someone reopening a wound that had never healed.
Eight years earlier, when he was seventeen, he lived with his mother in a small town in the interior of Jalisco. His mother, Teresa, cleaned houses and barely earned enough to get by. One day she came home with a girl with long braids and frightened eyes. She said she had found her alone, crying near the highway, and that no one seemed to be looking for her.
—“I knew something wasn’t right,” Daniel admitted, “but I was just a kid, and my mother told me not to ask questions.”
Over time, Sofía began to talk. She shared fragments: a beach, a yellow dress, a doll she had lost. Teresa said she would adopt her. She never took her to the police—she was afraid they would take the girl away.
—“It wasn’t the right decision,” Daniel said, his eyes filled with guilt. “But… she loved her. She truly loved her.”
Sofía grew up as part of that family. She went to school, laughed, sang. But every night before sleeping, she asked to have the same prayer to Our Lady of Guadalupe read to her. She said her mother prayed it too.
Elena broke down. She no longer tried to hold back. She cried for her husband who had died, for the lost years, for the child who had grown up far from her.
—“Is she alive?” she asked through sobs.
Daniel nodded.
—“She’s alive. And she’s strong. Very strong.”
He had seen her for the last time two months earlier. Sofía—now an eighteen-year-old young woman—worked as an assistant at a community clinic. Teresa had died the year before and, before passing, confessed everything. She told Sofía she was not her biological daughter, that she had found her on the beach in Puerto Vallarta and had been afraid.
—“Sofía was very angry,” Daniel said. “But she forgave her too.”
When Elena heard that, she knew her daughter was still the same big-hearted girl.
That very afternoon, they went together to the clinic.
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