PART 2
Don Ernesto hurried into the yard after hearing his wife’s startled cry. There, amid dust and dry earth, Doña Carmen stood clutching a handful of bills with shaking hands. The gray comforter—dismissed by Ricardo as “an old rag”—had split slightly along one seam during the forceful shake, exposing a hidden inner lining no one had ever known about.
“Ernesto! Look at this! It’s money—so much money!” Carmen exclaimed, dropping to her knees as she gathered the bills before the wind could carry them away.
Ernesto stepped forward, helping her up. His expression wasn’t one of shock, but quiet sorrow. “Let’s go inside, Carmen. It’s time you knew the truth about that comforter.”
Inside the modest house, Ernesto found an old pair of scissors and carefully began opening the quilt’s seams. Before Carmen’s stunned eyes, stacks of 500 and 1000 peso notes appeared from every section, neatly packed and protected in thin plastic.
“For twenty-five years, Carmen… every extra peso I earned from carpentry, every bit I managed to save—I hid it here,” Ernesto said, his voice rough. “I did it for the day my hands could no longer hold a hammer. I wanted us to have something to rely on if life turned difficult. But more than that… I did it because I knew our son better than you did. I knew his ambition might one day blind him, make him see us as a burden.”
Carmen wept again, but this time in awe of her husband’s sacrifice. “There’s a fortune here, Ernesto. We could have lived differently all these years.”
“We didn’t need more, Carmen. We had our family… or at least, I believed we did,” he replied softly. “But there’s something else.”
From the bottom of the quilt, Ernesto pulled out a worn envelope and an old business card. The name read: “Miguel Torres – Construction and Infrastructure.”
“Who is he?” Carmen asked.
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