Part 4 — Adrian Humiliated Me in Front of Millions and Announced His Marriage to Someone Else, but His Smile Disappeared When He Read My Last Message

The trace of blood was not mine.

Daniel told me this the next morning, when snow was accumulating so heavily by the clinic windows that the city looked like a hidden stage.

Eva was found behind the hospital. She was alive, but was trying to escape. In the car were my wooden box, several documents, and an old phone. The blood belonged to Raúl Mendoza.

Adrian immediately called Eva.

“Where are you?”

For a long time, only breathing could be heard in response.

“You told me Alba was inventing everything,” he said. “You told me this was an illness game.”

Eva began to cry.

“I did not know she would die.”

“But you knew she was ill.”

“Raúl told me that we only needed to destroy her reputation. You would marry me and everything would be over.”

Adrian’s voice cracked.

“Everything was not over. You built my life on waiting for someone else’s death.”

“Alba hid the truth from us herself.”

“That does not turn your lie into the truth.”

He ended the call.

That same day Daniel refused Adrian.

“I will no longer conduct this case in your name,” he told him in the law office, where Eva’s wedding invitations still lay on the table. “For three months you strengthened false accusations, made statements against her, and knew that her address was being spread publicly.”

“I never called for anyone to punish her.”

“But you laughed when others did it.”

Adrian lowered his head.

“Can you help me clear her name?”

“Now this is no longer your lawyer’s job. It is your conscience’s job.”

After returning to the clinic, Adrian heard his own voice for the first time.

Lucía played a video for him. It was footage from the concert. He stood on the stage, held Eva’s hand, and said:

“Eva is the person who stayed beside me when someone else chose a better life.”

The hall applauded.

Then the journalist’s question could be heard:

“Mr. Valdés, what will you say to Alba?”

Adrian’s old voice answered calmly:

“I wish that, at least once, she would live with the truth.”

The video ended.

Adrian buried his head in his hands.

“Did I say this?”

“You did it yourself,” Lucía answered.

“Why did you not stop me?”

Lucía looked into his eyes.

“Because you did not want to hear the truth.”

Adrian entered my room only once. My wooden music box lay on the bed. Its scratched lid was half open, and the melody could be heard intermittently.

“I left this here,” he told me.

“No. I left this for you.”

“Why did you hide the ring from me?”

“Because I thought that one day you would be left alone with yourself. I wanted you to have something in your hands that would not be saturated with the smell of my illness.”

“I wanted to stay with you.”

“I know.”

“Then why did you let me go?”

The answer to this question was the most difficult.

“Because sometimes a person understands love incorrectly. I thought it was freeing you. Now I understand that I also took away from you the right to say goodbye.”

Adrian picked up the box.

“Will you forgive me?”

“Maybe. But forgiveness does not mean returning.”

Three days later I died.

My room looked strangely small in the morning. Two glasses stood by the window, although the second one would no longer be needed by anyone. On the wall remained the only photograph of Adrian and me together—in a small kitchen in Lavapiés, where we were both laughing awkwardly because soup was spilling over on the stove.

There was nothing under the bed anymore.

Adrian did not give a speech at the memorial. For the first time he fell silent in front of people. He only read my text, which Lucía handed to him.

“I do not want anyone to punish themselves in my death. I want you, at last, to look at your own choices as they were.”

The hall was silent.

Eva appeared before the court. She and Raúl were charged with spreading false information, harassment, and organizing a campaign of threats. Adrian testified, but not once did he say that he wanted revenge.

“I only want them to stop using her name to cover their lie,” he said.

After several weeks, the city slowly stopped searching for my name.

The foundation to which I left my property opened a small house in Madrid for young patients. Lucía worked there every day. Children’s drawings hung on the walls, and the smell of cinnamon and freshly brewed coffee stood in the kitchen.

I was no longer there, but my decision continued living.

And Adrian moved to another city.

He temporarily stopped giving concerts, publicly apologized after the trial, and met with the people who had deleted their own threats because of my name. Some forgave him. Some did not.

That too was his choice.

Four months later, Lucía took my niece, little Noa, to the foundation. The boy looked at my photograph hanging on the wall.

“Did Aunt Alba sing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Why does she no longer sing?”

Lucía could not answer for a while.

“Now she teaches other children to sing.”

Noa thought, then drew a small house and a large yellow sun on a sheet of paper.

“This is for her,” he said. “So that she will no longer be afraid.”

That evening Lucía put the drawing in the foundation, in my old room. The room was already a children’s workshop. Colored pencils lay on the tables, and flowers were growing by the window.

Adrian sent the last message six months later—to Lucía’s phone.

“Today I opened your music box. The melody still stops in the middle. Perhaps it always played that way. And I thought I could repair it.”

The second message said:

“If you ever return to my life, you will find the door open.”

Lucía asked me what she should answer.

I could no longer answer, but one sentence from my letters remained, which she knew by heart.

“Tell him to leave the door open, but I will not return.”

Lucía wrote it and sent it.

Adrian sent us only one word.

“I understand.”

The first winter when snow came to Madrid—rarely, but still did come—Noa stood by the window at the foundation. He held my music box in his hands. Lucía had gotten it back from Adrian, because he said the object should be where my life continued.

Noa carefully opened the lid.

The melody stopped playing halfway again.

The boy put his ear to the box and smiled.

“It is all right,” he said. “The song still remains.”

Snow melted on the window glass, while a small patch of sunlight fell on the scratched wooden lid.

The melody stopped, but the silence was no longer empty.