After almost an hour, my arms were already hurting. We passed through neighborhoods where the gates were higher than the houses in my entire neighborhood, through streets with guards, with cameras, with beautiful pruned trees, the kind that only come out in the areas where you know you don’t belong.

And then, as they turned into a silent avenue, Doña Margarita straightened up suddenly.

“Here,” he said.

I stopped the wheelbarrow.

In front of us was an absurd mansion. No home. Mansion. Black gate, yes. But not just any one: huge, made of wrought iron, with two golden initials in the center. The sidewalk was clean as if it were swept with a toothbrush. There were cameras, a fountain turned off, and a uniformed guard at the entrance.

I stared at her and then I saw her.

“Does he live here?”

Doña Margarita looked at the gate with a sadness that did not combine with so much luxury.

“I lived here.

The guard approached as soon as he saw the wheelbarrow.

“Hey! They can’t be here! Get moving!

“We come with the lady,” I said. Her name is Margarita.

The man let out a laugh of those that bring contempt.

“Yes, of course. Take the crazy woman before she calls patrol.

Doña Margarita raised her face.

And something happened.

I don’t know if it was the voice or the way he looked at him, but the guard stopped smiling.

“Julian,” she said, very quietly. Don’t you recognize me anymore?

The man turned pale.

Literally. He lost his color.

“Sign… Mrs. Margarita?

He said it as if he had seen a ghost.

In two seconds, he opened the gate. Then he spoke on the radio with a rushed voice. Then he ran towards us, and for the first time since I saw him, he did not look like a guard: he looked like an employee on the point of losing his soul.

“Open up!” Open now! The lady is here!

The lights in the mansion came on one by one.

Two uniformed girls came out, then a driver, then a man in a black suit and a face of few friends. And behind them all, a tall woman, perfectly combed, in a wine-colored dress and jewels that shone even at night. He was in his forties, maybe fifty. Beautiful, yes. But of that cold beauty that does not give peace.

When he saw Margarita in the wheelbarrow, he put his hand to his chest.

“Mom!

It didn’t sound like relief. It sounded scary.

Doña Margarita stared at her.

—Elena.

That’s when I knew something was wrong.

I didn’t run to leave because my curiosity has always been greater than my prudence. I slowly got out of the wheelbarrow, still with my hands on the handles, and saw how the elegant woman approached with watery eyes… but without touching Margarita.

“We’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he said.

A lie.

Even I, sixteen years old and selling peanuts on cruise ships, could smell the lie.

Because a person like that doesn’t lose his mother three days on the street without half the city finding out. And even less so if she was, as she would later discover, Margarita de la Vega Torres, widow of the founder of Grupo Vega, owner of hotels, transport, land and even hospitals.

But I didn’t know that yet.

I only saw that Doña Margarita was not smiling.

“He hasn’t come,” she said.

Elena hardened her mouth for a second.

“Who, Mom?”

“My grandson.

Silence.

The man in the suit intervened quickly.

“Madam, let’s go in. She’s confused. He needs to rest.

Doña Margarita turned to me and grabbed my hand.

“This boy brought me. He stays.

The man scanned me from head to toe as if I had just scratched their wall with mud.

“It is not necessary.

“Yes, it is,” said Margaret.

And there, although no one knew it yet, my life changed.

They let me in.

I entered with my flip-flops full of dirt and my sweaty shirt into a house where the floor shone brighter than my future. Everything smelled of expensive flowers and fine wood. There were giant paintings, lamps like waterfalls and a staircase so wide that in my neighborhood it would have served as a court.

One of the girls wanted to take the wheelbarrow. I didn’t let go of her.

Not for dignity.

For fear that they would take me out and leave me on the other side of the gate as if it had all been a dream.

They put Doña Margarita in a huge bedroom. A private doctor arrived, two nu