I was sitting in the doctor's waiting room when my phone rang. It was Angela, my only daughter. Her voice sounded strange, almost cold, when she said, "Mom, we're going to Europe tomorrow. I already sold your beach house and your car. We needed the money. Bye." And she hung up just like that
45 years raising her, sacrificing myself for her, and she throws me away like trash. But I took a deep breath and smiled because there was something my dear daughter didn't know. My name is Antonia, I'm 71 years old, and until that moment I thought I knew my daughter. I had just been widowed 6 months earlier. Roberto, my husband, died of a heart attack while we were having breakfast together, as we had every morning for 45 years.
That morning he had served me coffee with milk and toast. As always, he had kissed my forehead and said, "Good morning, my love." They were his last words. Since then, Ángela had been more present in my life. Or so I thought. She came to visit me three times a week. She helped me with the funeral arrangements, she accompanied me to the market.
She even suggested I go to the doctor for a checkup. "Mom, you need to take better care of yourself now that you're alone." She told me with that smile I thought was one of love, but which I now understand was one of convenience. The beach house had been our refuge for years.
Roberto and I bought it when Ángela was 15, with a lot of hard work and sacrifice. Every summer we went there, made memories, celebrated birthdays, Christmases. Ángela brought her boyfriends, then Eduardo, her husband. I cooked for everyone, cleaned, did the laundry. It was our family tradition. I never thought she would see it only as money. And the car, that old Volkswagen that Roberto cared for as if it were his child, washed every Sunday, religiously changed the oil, always parked on the same corner under the shade of the tree. Ángela knew what that car
meant to me. It was the last thing I had left of him. His scent still lingered in the seats. When she hung up the phone, I stayed there sitting in that uncomfortable green plastic chair, surrounded by other sick people, and for the first time in months I didn't cry.
Something strange happened inside me, a calm I hadn't felt since Roberto's death, because at that moment I remembered something I had completely forgotten. Three days before he died, Roberto had given me a letter. "Antonia, keep this in your dresser drawer. If anything happens to me, open it after a while, but only when you feel ready." I put it away without thinking much about it.
After the funeral, with so much pain and so many arrangements, I simply forgot about it. But there it was, waiting for me at home. The nurse called me into the office. The doctor examined me. He told me I was fine for my age, that I just needed more rest and to eat better.
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