My name is Elena, and I believe I am your sister.
I have spent years searching for you. I found Rosa only after she became ill. She admitted that we were separated after our parents died because neither household could afford two children. She said she told you I had died because she feared you would leave her to find me.
I do not blame you for not searching. You did not know.
I am married now. My husband is named Gabriel. We have tried to have children, but the doctors say it may not happen for us. Still, my reason for writing is not to ask anything from you. I only want the chance to meet you once and tell you that you were never alone in the world.
Your sister,
Elena
Mother Caridad lowered the letter.
Esperanza looked as though the floor had shifted beneath her.
“My name was Ana?”
“Yes,” Paloma said.
“Why do I not remember her?”
“You were very young when you were separated. Perhaps four or five.”
“Did I meet her after she wrote?”
Paloma hesitated.
“Yes.”
Mother Caridad’s head lifted sharply.
“When?”
“During the weeks after your illness.”
“Inside the convent?”
“In the old guest parlor.”
Mother Caridad felt anger rise, but she kept her voice controlled.
“I was never told.”
“Mother Inés believed it should remain private until Esperanza decided what she wanted.”
Esperanza gripped the edge of the bed.
“What did I decide?”
The doctor’s face softened.
“You wanted to help her.”
“With what?”
Paloma did not answer at once.
And in that pause, Mother Caridad understood why the medical tape had frightened her.
She looked at Esperanza, then at the positive test on the tray.
“Her sister could not have children,” she said slowly.
Paloma nodded.
Esperanza stared between them.
“No.”
“Esperanza—”
“No,” she repeated, but there was no anger in the word. Only disbelief. “You are saying that I agreed to carry a child for someone else?”
“You agreed to consider it.”
“The children are Elena’s?”
“Biologically, that was the intention.”
The words hung between them.
From the corridor came the soft murmur of Sister Lucía singing to Miguel.
Esperanza looked toward the door.
“Intention?”
Doctor Paloma lowered her gaze.
“The first procedure was performed six years ago.”
Mother Caridad blinked.
“Six years?”
“It was unsuccessful.”
Esperanza’s fingers trembled.
“I remember nothing.”
“You became frightened afterward,” Paloma said. “Not because anyone forced you. Because you were uncertain whether your decision had come from love, guilt, or the fevered need to repair a family you had just discovered.”
Mother Caridad stepped forward.
“Then it should have ended.”
“It did.”
“But the pregnancies began three years later.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Paloma reached into her case again and removed a small notebook bound in dark leather.
It was not a medical record. The pages were filled with dates, initials, and short handwritten entries.
“Mother Inés kept this,” she said. “After her death, I found it among the records she asked me to preserve.”
Mother Caridad did not take the notebook.
“You are avoiding the answer.”
“I am trying to give it in the right order.”
“Then stop arranging the truth as though you own it.”
Paloma flinched.
Esperanza looked at Mother Caridad.
“Please.”
The older nun fell silent.
Doctor Paloma opened the notebook.
“After the first attempt failed, Elena and Gabriel left the region. They wrote several times. Esperanza answered twice.”
“I wrote to her?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have the letters?”
“No. But Mother Inés copied a line from one of them.”
Paloma read from the page.
“I cannot promise you a child, but I do not want fear to decide whether we remain sisters.”
Esperanza closed her eyes.
The sentence seemed to touch something in her memory.
A table.
A blue envelope.
Rain on glass.
Her own hand shaking as she wrote.
“I remember the ink,” she whispered.
Paloma leaned forward.
“What color?”
“Blue.”
The doctor nodded.
“You are remembering.”
Esperanza pressed her fingertips to her temples.
“There was a woman across from me. She had my eyes.”
“Elena.”
“She was crying.”
“Yes.”
“But she was not asking me for a baby.”
“No.”
“She said…” Esperanza struggled, then opened her eyes. “She said she had spent too many years wanting a sister to risk losing one over a child.”
Doctor Paloma’s face filled with relief.
“That is what she said.”
Mother Caridad looked from one woman to the other.
“Then how did Esperanza become pregnant?”
Paloma closed the notebook.
“That is what I do not fully understand.”
The three women remained in the infirmary for nearly an hour.
Doctor Paloma explained that the first medical procedure had taken place with Esperanza’s written consent, witnessed by Mother Inés and an independent physician from the city. Because of Esperanza’s illness and later distress, the documents had been sealed. No further attempt was supposed to occur without her renewed agreement.
Yet three years later, Esperanza had become pregnant with Tomás.
Tests performed after his birth suggested he was related to Esperanza.
But Paloma had never been allowed to complete further testing.
“Allowed by whom?” Mother Caridad asked.
“Mother Inés was already dead. The diocesan administrator advised discretion.”
“Discretion is not an answer.”
“No,” Paloma said. “It is often the place where answers are buried.”
Miguel began to fuss in the corridor.
