still woke some nights unable to move, convinced the ceiling above him was a coffin lid.
He still hated the smell of funeral flowers and could not tolerate the sound of metal locks.
But he picked up the nameplate.
“I thought you might want to destroy it,” Daniel said.
Alejandro turned it over in his hand.
“No.”
He walked to the fireplace but did not throw it into the flames.
Instead, he placed it inside a drawer beneath an old photograph of the two brothers as children.
“Why keep it?” Daniel asked.
Alejandro closed the drawer.
“Because it has the wrong date on it.”
Daniel looked at him.
Alejandro’s smile was small, but it was real.
The plate marked the day everyone believed his life had ended.
To Alejandro, it had become proof of something else: the day greed failed, silence broke, and his brother arrived before the fire could erase the truth.
