I had seen it in her drawings. And I hadn’t understood. I thought it was a child’s imagination. But children draw what adults hide.
We went inside when they opened it.
The house smelled of recent abandonment. Of papers moved around. Of kicked-up dust. Of Maurício’s cologne.
It wasn’t empty, but it no longer felt like a home. There were open boxes, books on the floor, unframed photographs. The living room where Antonio used to listen to the radio on Sundays looked like a warehouse.
Valentina guided me to the back room.
“There.”
Next to the door, down low near the baseboard, there was a black square.
It wasn’t a decoration.
It was a plastic cover, clumsily painted. I had never noticed it because a tool cabinet used to stand there. The locksmith removed it with a screwdriver.
Inside, there was a hollow space. And inside the hollow, a small metal box.
My heart began to pound.