Child,
if Alejandro offers you tea, do not drink it.
If he is so nice that you feel like he is putting his hand over your mouth, don’t trust him.
He has known about the spring contracts ever since your father passed away. He thinks the court gives him the right to do anything.
Marisol discovered what he was doing. I have hidden him. If I cannot stop him, the old path beneath the chapel will lead him to him.
Don’t go to the police first. Go to Father Tomás in San Jerónimo with the little red book and the will.
Trust the paper more than your tears.
You slowly leaf through the pages.
Marisol hem.
So he was probably still alive when your mother wrote this.
With trembling hands, you unfold the revised will. The document is clear, unshakeable, and watertight, in a way only your mother’s lawyer could have formulated. The court and the house were not made for each other, as Alejandro had claimed. Instead, the water rights and control over the surrounding land were left to the consent of both brothers until your twenty-fifth birthday, after which your share would become independently enforceable if your brother could demonstrate that there had been “restriction of freedom of expression or bad faith in the administration of the estate.” That sentence was underlined with your mother’s pen.
The photos are even worse.
