Chapter 8
The next morning, the rain had cleared, leaving behind a crisp, washed-blue autumn sky that stretched out over the city skyline. Alejandro had arranged for a private car to take them to a high-end department store before it opened to the general public, prioritizing privacy and comfort for Leo. Standing in the brightly lit fitting rooms among racks of expensive wool sweaters and denim, Alejandro watched as an elderly tailor carefully measured the boy for trousers and shirts. Leo stood very still, treating the measuring tape with the cautious respect of someone handling a wild animal. "He's growing like a weed," the tailor remarked in a friendly, gravelly voice. "Give him six months and he'll be out of these entirely." Alejandro nodded distantly, sitting on a leather bench nearby. His mind was elsewhere. He kept thinking about the silver rose pendant, which Leo now wore securely tucked inside the pocket of his new jacket rather than around his neck, as if afraid it might be snatched away. He pulled out his phone and opened an old, archived email folder dating back nearly a decade. He scrolled down past work memos and travel itineraries until he found a string of messages from a woman named Clara. Clara. The name hit him like a physical blow. He had completely forgotten the cadence of her voice, the stubborn slant of her handwriting, the fierce, artistic independence that had both drawn him in and terrified him. In one of her last emails—sent long after he had stopped replying—she had written: You think you can just pack up your ambition and leave the rest of us behind in the dirt, Alejandro, but the ground remembers everything. He closed the email app, his hands cold. He had spent his entire adult life believing that moving forward meant shedding every uncomfortable memory, every messy attachment, every failure of character. Now, sitting in a luxury department store while an eight-year-old boy tried on his first pair of brand-new leather boots, Alejandro understood the fatal flaw in that philosophy. You couldn't outrun your own blood. It simply waited for you in hotel lobbies, wearing a dirty grey shirt and holding out a silver flower.
