The agent took the folder.
Paloma fixed her eyes on me as they put the handcuffs on her. She wasn’t smiling anymore. Her mouth was barely trembling.
—You’re not going to survive this, Mother.
Esperanza, still pale, took a step forward with the baby in her arms.
—She is not alone.
Nobody spoke for several seconds.
Outside, rain began to fall on the bougainvillea-covered patio. The smell of wet earth drifted in through the broken window. The candles before the Virgin of Guadalupe flickered as if the air, too, were weary.
The north crypt opened at 11:37 pm.
I didn’t go down alone. The agent, Julián, and Consuelo came with me. The underground passageway smelled of damp stone and old flowers. Each step creaked under my shoes. At the far end, Mother Inés’s coffin waited, covered in dust.
The agent carefully lifted the lid.
There were no remains inside.
There were boxes.
Boxes with women’s names. Boxes with receipts. Boxes with baby photos. Boxes with letters that never reached their recipients.
Above each of them was a note written with the same blue ink as the old photograph:
“If Caridad finds this, believe her. I couldn’t save them. She can.”
Consuelo burst into tears.
I couldn’t.
My eyes went dry, fixed on those letters of a dead woman who had waited years underground for someone to finish what she started.
At dawn, they took Paloma away.
They also sealed the San Ángel clinic and requested a warrant to search other properties linked to the foundation. Esperanza and her three children were moved to a secure room inside a convent in Puebla.
She did not allow anyone to separate the newborn from her arms, not even to change his blanket.
Before leaving, he handed me the medical tape.
“Why did it have his name?” he asked me.
I looked at the black ink.
Charity Salgado.
It was not a proprietary firm.
It was a threat.
Paloma had marked the baby with my name because she planned to bury me in the crypt and blame me for everything.
The fake folder, my seal, my supposed authorizations, the prepared envelopes: each piece was ready to turn Mother Caridad into the woman who sold the silence of the convent.
Esperanza’s youngest son had not arrived to close the secret.
He had arrived as bait.
And I almost took the bait.
That afternoon, when the convent was empty of patrols, I went into the office alone. The chair was still turned upside down. Paloma’s briefcase was gone. On the floor lay a dry drop of red wax, broken in two like a shattered seal.
I picked up the rosary from the desk.
The hollow cross weighed less without the memory inside.
On the wall, the Virgin of Guadalupe was still leaning, the frame twisted from the morning’s blow. I straightened it with both hands.
Then I looked toward the hallway where Esperanza had first said, “I think I’m pregnant. Again.”
There was no crying.
No key clicked.
All that remained was the empty crib by the window, the folded medical tape on the desk, and an unlit candle in front of the Virgin, leaving a trail of black smoke that slowly rose until it disappeared into the ceiling.
