Marisol’s voice broke.
“She knows why your father died.”
The call disconnected.
I immediately tried to call back.
The number was no longer in service.
Maya and I stared at each other across the narrow hospital room, separated by five feet of polished floor and more questions than either of us knew how to ask.
On the bedside table, Liam began to stir.
Outside, the first snow of the new year drifted past the window.
And somewhere between Brooklyn, Miami, and a voice from thirty years ago, the story of our families had changed into something neither of us recognized.
PART 3
For several seconds after the call disconnected, neither David nor Maya moved.
The hospital room seemed too small to hold what they had just heard.
Outside the window, snow drifted past in slow white threads, catching the amber glow of streetlights. Inside, the machines beside Maya’s bed continued their steady beeping, indifferent to the fact that a woman in another country had just spoken David’s mother’s name and claimed to know something about his father’s death.