-Me neither.
—Does it scare you?
Elena thought about the woman she had been a year before, dressed in ivory, seeking absolute certainty in a man’s face.
—Less than before.
Diego smiled.
-Me too.
They hugged.
It wasn’t a kiss.
It wasn’t a spectacular reconciliation.
It was a bit more difficult.
Two people accepting that love could not require them to pretend that the damage had not occurred.
Then Diego left.
Elena returned to the studio.
The streetlight fell on the frame.
White.
Empty in the center.
For twenty years, a small red square had represented fear, money, fraud, and silence.
His father had used it as an alarm.
Tomás had seen it as a threat.
Diego as a reminder of everything his family had hidden.
Elena no longer wanted it to mean any of those things.
He opened the window.
Cold air came in.
He looked at the plans for Valdemora spread out on the table. The new project wouldn’t bear his father’s name, nor the Salvatierra name. It would have small houses, a modest hotel, protected areas, and a community center.
That was not Julian’s vision.
Neither did Tomás’s.
It was his.
Elena picked up the frame one last time.
He turned it.
On the back he wrote a sentence in pencil.
Not to hide it.
Not to turn it into code.
Just to remember her.
“The truth does not need to be at the center to hold everything together.”
She left the frame on the shelf.
He turned off the light.
And he left the studio without taking the red square.
END.
