In the third, the paper fell out of his hand.
She brought her fingers to her mouth and let out a choked, deep, almost childlike cry.
He looked at Camila with his face completely undone.
“You are my daughter.
Camila was unable to answer.
She stood still for two seconds, maybe three, trying to understand the weight of those words she had always dreamed of hearing from someone, even without knowing it.
“You’re my Livia…” Isabela repeated, through tears. “My girl… my daughter… You came back to me.
It was Camila who moved first.
Or maybe it was Livia.
Not even she knew anymore.
He ran to Dona Isabela, and the two embraced in the middle of the room as if they wanted to sew twenty-two years of absence with the strength of that single moment.
Isabela cried in her daughter’s hair.
Camila cried on her mother’s shoulder.
And neither of them could stop.
The housekeepers, the housekeeper and even the security guards who watched from afar had to wipe their eyes.
But the truth still brought one last pain.
Days later, when they reviewed everything that Dona Marlene had left in storage, they found an old letter, folded inside a yellowed Bible.
In the letter, Marlene confessed what she had never had the courage to say in life.
On that day of the party, she had actually found the girl alone and crying.
He waited, searched, asked some people, but the confusion was enormous.
When he learned, hours later, that a wealthy family was desperately searching for a missing girl, he felt afraid.
Fear of being accused of kidnapping.
Fear of losing the child, whom he had already approached.
Fear of returning to his empty and poor house.
So he ran away with the girl.
He started to call her Camila.
And he carried the guilt until the end of his life.
When she finished reading the letter, Dona Isabela was silent.
Camila lowered her head, devastated.
“Forgive me,” he whispered. “I know she made a mistake. And I know that I am part of this pain.
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