The cold floor of her parents' room felt like an anchor, and the open trunk, with its heartbreaking secrets, like an abyss that had swallowed her whole. Lysandra was still there, curled up, her body shaken by sobs she no longer tried to suppress. The echo of the loss of her unborn brother, the weight of Julian and Elara's silent grief, had broken her. The strength she had cultivated over the years, that collected stillness, had dissolved in a torrent of salty tears that soaked the dusty carpet and the worn paper of her father's note. Her chest felt tight, her throat closed, every breath a painful effort.
In the midst of that utter desolation, a sharp, insistent sound, completely alien to the funereal atmosphere of the room, startled her. Her phone. She had left it on a nearby table upon entering, and now it vibrated and rang with a shrillness that seemed almost violent in the grief-filled silence.
For a moment, she considered ignoring it. Who could it be? What did it matter when her inner world was crumbling? But the call persisted, again and again, a stubborn intrusion into her grief.
With what seemed a monumental effort, Lysandra sat up, her body numb, her eyes swollen and burning. She located the phone with blurred vision and took it with a trembling hand. The caller ID displayed an international number she didn't immediately recognize, but something about the sequence of digits caused a familiar, almost forgotten tug.
She slid her finger across the screen, bringing the device to her ear, unable to utter a word, only a stifled sob escaping her lips.
"Hello? Lys? Are you there?" The voice on the other end was male, vibrant, with an energy that contrasted starkly with her condition. And then, with a tone that was a mixture of impatient joy and a familiarity that hit her like a warm wave: "Hi, how are you, silly! It's me, Fernando, your brother. Guess what! I just landed in Cancún. It was a long flight from China, you'd never know! But I'm here now. I estimate I'll be home in an hour or so. I'm about to get off the plane right now. How's everything over there?"
Lysandra froze. Fernando. Her brother. The word echoed in her mind, struggling to break through the fog of her grief. Fernando, whom she hadn't seen in years, since he'd left to work on engineering projects on the other side of the world. Fernando, her older brother, the one with the constant jokes, the one with the bulletproof optimism, the one who had always known how to snap her out of her reverie with a quip.
The tears were still rolling down her cheeks, but now they were different. The crying that choked her began to subside, replaced by a disbelief that took her breath away. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, a clumsy, childish gesture.
"Fer... Fernando?" she managed to whisper, her voice cracking, almost unrecognizable even to herself. "Is... is it really you?"
"Of course it's me, silly! Who else would call you like that and dare to show up without giving us more notice? Listen, I have to hang up because they're already rushing us to get off. But get ready, the cavalry has arrived! See you in an hour. Don't move from there!" And as suddenly as it had broken into her desolation, the call ended.
Lysandra slowly lowered the phone, her hand still shaking, but now for a completely different reason. Fernando. Her brother. Alive. Here. In Cancún.
A new emotion, so powerful and sudden it almost made her stagger, surged from the depths of her being, sweeping away the tide of sadness. It was joy. A pure, unexpected, almost wild joy. The image of the small lock of hair in the envelope, the pain for her lost brother, was still there, an open wound in her heart, but now, suddenly, she no longer felt so hopelessly alone in the world. She had a brother. A living brother who was about to walk through the door.
She looked at herself in the mirror on her mother's vanity table, her reflection a mess of red-rimmed eyes and disheveled hair. But through the remaining tears, a new light began to shine in her violet pupils. The news from the past had sunk her, but this call from the present was an anchor, an unexpected buoy in the midst of her emotional shipwreck.
She wasn't alone. Fernando was on his way. And that certainty, in that instant, changed everything.