The dwelling was a single room divided by an old curtain. There was a small refrigerator that sounded as if it might fall apart at any moment, a two-burner stove, a plastic table, two mismatched chairs, and the smell of cheap soap mixed with freshly boiled beans. On the cement floor, sitting cross-legged, drawing with crayons on a torn sheet of paper, was Luna.
Mary let out a stifled scream.
-Daughter!
He ran to her with open arms, but Luna didn’t run to take refuge against his chest. She didn’t even move. She lifted her face, looked at them both, and remained still, with an expression so serious she seemed much older than her eight years.
Mary fell to her knees in front of her.
—My love, my little girl, we were desperate… we looked everywhere for you… I thought…
Luna’s voice cut her like a razor.
—I left because you guys are never around.
Robert felt a sharp blow to his chest. Mary froze.
Luna continued speaking, her face wrinkled from holding back tears.
—I would wake up and they would already be gone. I would fall asleep and they still hadn’t arrived. They would promise me they were going to come for me and they wouldn’t. That week they left me at school 3 times. 3 times. The last time the janitor gave me water because they were already closing and I was still waiting.
Mary covered her mouth and began to cry with a broken, animalistic sound.
“And whenever I wanted to tell them something,” Luna continued, “they were always on their phones or talking about work. I thought…” She swallowed and turned to look at Carolina, “I thought that if I disappeared, maybe they would notice.”
Celia, Carolina’s mother, stood by the stove, her hands tangled in her apron. She wept silently, not daring to interrupt. Carolina, sitting next to Luna, squeezed her new friend’s hand and looked at Robert and Mary with a serenity neither of them deserved.
“I found her on a bench,” he said. “She was crying really badly. She told me she didn’t want to go back because nobody could see her there. And I believed her. Because I know how it feels when nobody sees you.”
