When I Returned Home, I Saw That My Parents Asked Permission Even in Their Own Kitchen, and My Brother’s Smile Suddenly Disappeared

My mother called me at eleven at night and whispered that I should not come home that weekend, because Father was already afraid to open his own door.

“Son, don’t come,” Carmen said.

“What happened? Did something happen to Father?”

“No. Just… don’t come.”

Then she hung up.

The phone remained in my hand. For two years I had been sending seventy thousand pesos every month so that my parents could live peacefully in the house they had bought after thirty-eight years of work. My father, Manuel, was a carpenter. My mother, Carmen, sewed clothes for the neighbors and altered school uniforms. Their house stood in an old neighborhood of Guadalajara, with thick walls, colorful ceramic floors, and a lemon tree standing in the yard.

My younger brother, Diego, and I grew up there.

In the morning I flew on the very first plane. I left my suitcase at the hotel, put on a simple shirt, and took a taxi to the neighborhood. I did not want my parents to know in advance. First I had to see everything with my own eyes.

It was five in the evening when I saw them returning from the market. Father was carrying vegetables, bread, and milk, while Mother had a small bag. I smiled. For a few seconds I was again a twenty-year-old boy helping Mother carry the groceries.

But they did not stop in front of the main door.

They turned into the narrow passage beside it and entered through the small door of the back yard.

“They have been walking like this for months,” Pilar, our neighbor who had known the family for more than three decades, told me quietly.

“Why?”

Pilar pressed her lips together.

“Diego says the main entrance is for guests.”

I did not understand what she meant.

“But this is their house.”

“I tell him the same, son. But it is better if you listen yourself.”

I hid behind Pilar’s low wall. Voices came from the kitchen window. I heard my father’s voice first.

“Veronica, may we have dinner here today?”

A quiet pause fell.

“Friends are coming today, Manuel,” Diego’s wife answered. “Eat in the back.”

“We will sit for only twenty minutes.”

“Father, please. We have already talked about this.”

It was as if all the strength had left Father’s hands.

“This house is ours,” he said with difficulty.

“The papers may say so, but now Diego takes care of everything. Don’t make it difficult.”

The rough stone of Pilar’s wall pierced my fingers. Blood came out, though I felt no pain.

At that very moment the main door opened. Diego entered in an expensive coat, followed by two unfamiliar men. He did not even look at my parents.

“Alvaro?” Pilar suddenly said.

Diego stopped.

I came out from behind the wall.

A smile appeared on his face, but his eyes immediately hardened.

“Brother, what are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that. Why are our parents eating in the back yard?”

Veronica went to the window and quickly pulled the curtain shut.

Diego shrugged.

“They themselves prefer peace.”

“Mother called me and told me not to come.”

Father appeared in the doorway. In his hand he held the old wooden key that he had hung from his belt since childhood.

“Alvaro, go into the room,” he told me.

“Father, tell me what is happening.”

He looked at Diego and went pale.

“Not yet. If he finds out that I have the key, he will take everything from us.”

Diego stepped forward.

“What key are you talking about?”

Father hid his hand in his pocket. At that moment the sound of car brakes came from far away, and a black car stopped at the gate. A woman got out, holding a brown folder, and walked straight toward our house…

The woman stopped at the gate and pressed the folder to her chest. She was about fifty years old, her hair was tied back severely, and the dust of the wet street clung to her shoes.

“Does Mr. Manuel live here?” she asked.

Diego blocked the door as if she were a stranger.

“Who are you?”

“Mariana Torres. I am a lawyer.”

The smile disappeared from Diego’s face.

“Nobody called you.”

Mariana took one sheet of paper from the folder.

“Mr. Manuel summoned me. And before you say anything, I will tell you that this visit has been recorded.”

Father slowly approached the door. Mother had dried her hands on her apron, but her fingers were still trembling.

“Mariana, you came,” he said.

“I came as I promised you. But we have very little time left.”

Diego burst out laughing.

“Father, this is ridiculous. You let some unfamiliar lawyer into the house, while I am a guest in my own family?”

“We are the guests,” Father answered quietly.

These words fell more heavily than any shouting of his could have.

Mariana looked toward me.

“Are you Alvaro?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should know from your brother that during the last six months money has been moving from your parents’ accounts to another account.”

Diego’s hand tightened around the door handle.

“I managed their expenses.”

“Seventy thousand pesos a month is not an expense,” I told him. “I was transferring that money to them.”

“You live abroad and have no idea what is happening here.”

“That is exactly why I came.”

Veronica intervened quickly.

“Enough. The neighbors are watching us.”

Pilar immediately said loudly:

“The neighbors are watching because you make your elderly parents crawl in through the back door.”

Diego turned toward her.

“Mind your own business.”

That same evening, at seven o’clock, we gathered in the parents’ small room. The room smelled of damp wood. On the wall hung a photograph from our childhood, whose corner I had once glued back together.

“Tell me everything,” I said.

Mother lowered her head in tears.

“Diego told us that we could no longer afford the house payments. Then he made us sign a power of attorney.”

“What power of attorney?”

“He said he would deal with the bank and utilities,” Father answered. “But after that he took the main bedroom. Before entering the kitchen, we have to ask Veronica. When guests come, they send us to the yard.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

Mother raised her head.

“I called you. But Diego blocked your number in my phone.”

I could hear the sound of blood in my ears.

Mariana opened the folder.

“This is only the beginning. The main problem is that tomorrow morning they must sign the house-sale contract.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Diego presented a document as if Manuel and Carmen had voluntarily transferred the house to him. Now he is selling it to an investor.”

Father took the old key from his pocket. Its head was shaped like a small wooden bird, carved from lemon wood. Since childhood I knew that Father never parted with this key.

“This key remained with me from your grandfather,” he said. “But even Diego will not find the door it opens.”

“Where is that door?”

Father looked at the old mirror hanging in the corner of the room.

“Behind that wall. Twenty years ago I hid something that may be our only salvation today.”

Diego’s footsteps sounded outside. The handle slowly came down.

Mariana spread the papers on the table.

“If this thing really exists, we must see it today. Tomorrow it may already be too late.”

Father moved the mirror aside, knocked three times on the wall with his fingers, and a small wooden panel moved. He put the key into the lock. Diego stopped behind the door.

“Father, open up,” he shouted.

The key slowly turned and a quiet click sounded from the wall. Father put his hand into the dark niche and closed his fingers around something hard. But before he could take it out, the door shook violently and Diego shouted:

“If you bring out what is hidden now, you will all regret it…”

Father did not remove his hand from the niche. Outside, Diego was hitting the door with his fists, but Mariana raised her phone and calmly told him:

“Hit it once more. That will go into the recording too.”

There was no second blow.

Father took a flat iron box from the niche. The box had rust-colored stains, and a lemon leaf was engraved on its lid. The lemon-wood key belonged to it.

“My father gave this to me when we bought the house,” Manuel said. “He told me that a man should always keep the real deed to his own house where another person’s hand cannot find it.”

Mariana opened the lock.

First appeared a document certified with a notary’s seal. Then another sheet. And finally a small memory card.

Diego no longer shook the door. In the silence his voice was heard.

“Father, don’t do this.”

“I have done nothing, son,” Manuel answered. “You did.”

Mariana unfolded the first document and put on her glasses.

“It says here that the house is your property and that it may be alienated only with the personal consent of both owners. The second document is the expert report on your signatures.”

“What report?” I asked.

“The signatures are forged. The ink is from different years, while the signature lines were transferred from a copy.”

Mother covered her mouth with her hand. Father sank into a chair.

“I knew he was deceiving us about something,” he said. “But I could not imagine that my own son would even steal my hand.”

Mariana inserted the memory card into the laptop. First a blurry image appeared on the screen, and then the kitchen of the house. The camera stood on a bookshelf. The recording had been made two months earlier.

Diego’s voice could be heard clearly.

“Sign it, Father. If not, the bank will take the house from you.”

“We have no debt at the bank.”

“Alvaro will not send you money anymore. I already told him that you spend it and waste everything.”

Mother began to cry in the recording.

“Diego, this is our house.”

“It is no longer yours if you do not sign.”

Everyone fell silent in the room. In the video Diego approached the table, put the paper in front of Father, and added in a low voice:

“Either you sign, or tomorrow I will take Mother to a nursing home. At least there you will no longer have to ask permission for food.”

Mariana stopped the recording.

Tears ran down Mother’s face. I could not speak. In childhood I always defended Diego when he got into fights at school. And now on the screen I was seeing a person for whom our parents’ fear had become a weapon.

The door slowly opened. Diego entered. His face had gone pale.

“This proves nothing,” he said.

“It proves threats, forged signatures, and financial fraud,” Mariana answered.

“They are my family!”

“Family is not property,” I told him.

Diego lunged toward me, but Father stood up.

“Alvaro will not lay a hand on you anymore. Nor will you make me kneel.”

Mariana made a call on the phone.

“I am notifying the police and we are requesting a temporary court prohibition. Tomorrow’s sale will be stopped.”

Diego stepped back.

“You do not know whom you are confronting.”

“Now we know whom we are protecting,” Mariana answered.

That night, when Diego and Veronica left the house, a message from an unknown number arrived on Father’s phone. Mariana read it and her face immediately changed.

“What does it say?” I asked.

She turned the screen toward me.

The message was only one sentence: “If you do not leave the house by morning, the second recording hidden for Alvaro will be broadcast…”