𝙴𝚕 𝙳𝚎𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚕[𝙲𝚄𝙴𝙽𝚃𝙾]|𝙵𝙸𝙲𝙲𝙸Ó𝙽 (𝙴𝚂𝙿-𝙴𝙽𝙶)

After his grandmother died and his sister sent him that letter, Rubén left behind the cold of Pennsylvania and flew to Havana. The letter said: "Come. There are things." Nothing more. That was his aunt, a woman of clipped sentences and long silences.

The house was the same.

The familiar musty smell, the entryway with its loose tiles, the patio where Grandma hung the laundry every Wednesday. On the kitchen table, neatly folded, lay the apron. Jam stains on the left pocket. A wear mark on the hem, right where she rested her hands to look out the window.

"Your grandmother wanted you to have it," Auntie said from the doorway.

Rubén didn't answer. He touched the fabric. Through the window, he could see the back of the patio, beyond it the river that Grandma gazed at every afternoon as if waiting for something. Or someone.

"She didn't just sew clothes," Auntie said.

She sat down. She lit a cigarette. The smoke filled the kitchen, mingling with the smell of things stored away, of years, of jam fermenting in jars that no one would ever open again.

"In the hem," she said. "She sewed things. For years."

Rubén felt his stomach clench. He remembered the harvest festivals, when they would go down to the riverfront and his grandmother would prepare bread with tomato puree and lettuce. He remembered his childhood summers, when they would fish together in the river, the fish jumping, her laughing shyly. Unforgettable.

"What things?"

"Letters. A man. A scandal, Rubén."

His aunt spoke slowly. The man was Italian. He had arrived by ship and stayed at the Hotel Nacional. She worked in the kitchen. He would come down for breakfast and stand watching her. Later, there were afternoons in the hotel room, with the curtain drawn and the sound of taxis outside, on the waterfront promenade.

"He was married. Back in Italy. He had a large family: a wife, children, land. He promised to return. He sent letters for a while. Then, nothing."

The breakup was silent. No one knew, or everyone pretended not to know. His grandmother left the hotel, married his grandfather, and had children. But he kept the letters. He sewed them into the hem of his apron, along with a small photograph: the man was smiling, leaning against an old taxi, the sea in the background.

"That's not all," his aunt said.

Rubén looked at her.

"Your mother was that man's daughter. Not your grandfather's."

The silence grew. Outside, the river continued its course, the fish swam downstream to the sea, the hours passed like years pass in families: heavy, quiet, full of unspoken things.

"That's why she left," his aunt said. "Your mother went so far away. She wasn't from here. She knew something, she sensed something, and she left."

That night, Rubén unstitched the hem and found the letters, tied with a thread. The photograph and a name: Alessandro. An address in Genoa that no longer existed, erased by the years and the bombs of another war.

He kept everything. He took the apron with him to Pennsylvania. He hung it on the living room wall, where it wouldn't be in the way, where he sometimes looked at it. It no longer smells of jam, or tomato puree, or the boardwalk parties. It smells of an empty house, of a flowing river, of years that took everything but this: an apron, some letters, a name.

Alessandro.

Sometimes Rubén says the name aloud, just to hear it. Like someone who throws a stone into the river and waits, without expecting, for the fish to answer.

CREDITS

_{© Original content in Spanish, translated into English by Google Translate}

_{Logo by @marabuzal created in Banner Maker}