Chapter 5: The Voice I Hadn't Heard in Eighteen Years
His number wasn't hard to find.
One search, his name, the city where my father had said he still lived.
A LinkedIn profile.
A small landscaping business.
A phone number listed right there on the contact page, the way small business owners do when they want people to be able to reach them.
Luis Medina.
Owner.
Est.
2009.
I stared at the number for a long time.
Then I called before I could talk myself out of it.
It rang four times.
I was already composing the voicemail in my head when he picked up.
"Medina Landscaping."
His voice was deeper than I remembered.
Steadier.
The voice of a man who'd built something with his hands and answered his own phone.
"Luis," I said.
"It's Rosa."
The silence that followed was the longest three seconds of my life.
"Rosa." Not a question.
Just the word, landing.
"I know this is — I know.
I just came from seeing my father.
He told me about the phone call.
And he showed me the letter."
"The letter with your handwriting."
"I didn't write it."
Another silence.
Then, very quietly: "I know."
"You know?"
"I figured it out about four years ago.
I hired someone — a document examiner.
Just to settle it in my own head.
She said the letter was written by someone mimicking your style.
Not a perfect copy.
Close, but not you." He paused.
"I didn't know what to do with that.
I didn't know who to tell."
"It was Diane," I said.
I heard him breathe in.
Hold it.
"She just told me," I said.
"She admitted it.
She said she wrote it because she thought she was helping me.
She also — Luis, she said the hotel.
The woman you were seen with.
She arranged that too."
The sound he made wasn't quite a word.
It was the sound of something that had been held in for a very long time finally being allowed to move.
"I spent years," he said slowly, "trying to remember what I'd done.
Going back over every conversation, every night I came home late, every time I forgot something.
Trying to find the thing I must have done to make you write that letter."
"You didn't do anything."
"I know that now.
But I didn't know it then.
And by the time I started to suspect — you'd blocked me everywhere.
I didn't have a way to reach you that didn't feel like harassment."
"You reached my father."
"Two years ago.
I thought maybe he could — I don't know.
I thought maybe he'd tell you.
Or at least that someone would know the truth before I — " He stopped.
"Before you what?"
"Before I got too old and it stopped mattering."
I closed my eyes.
"It still matters," I said.
"Yeah." His voice was rough.
"It does."
We were both quiet for a moment.
Outside my window, the sprinkler had stopped.
The lawn was dark and wet and still.
"My father wants to see you," I said.
"That's his final wish.
He wants to see you both together.
He wants to say something to you before he can't anymore."
Luis was quiet for a long time.
"When?" he said finally.
"Soon.
He doesn't have much time."
"Okay," he said.
"Tell me where."
I gave him the hospital name.
The floor number.
The room.
"Rosa," he said, just before I was about to hang up.
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you called."
I didn't trust my voice enough to say much back.
So I just said, "Me too."
I set the phone down on the kitchen table and sat in the quiet for a while.
Then I thought about Diane.
About the fact that she was sitting somewhere right now, knowing what I knew, waiting to see what I would do with it.
May you like
I picked the phone back up.
This time, I called my lawyer.
