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.
