A burden.<\/p>\n
And then, Do\u00f1a Elena understood something terrible:<\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t been invited to live there.<\/p>\n
She had been tolerated.<\/p>\n
Barely.<\/p>\n
Diego, her boy, the same child who used to run barefoot through the fields\u2026 was being controlled, pressured, perhaps even manipulated. She saw it in his eyes during dinner.<\/p>\n
He wanted her close.<\/p>\n
But Mariana didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
And in that house, it was obvious who was in control.<\/p>\n
That night, Do\u00f1a Elena didn\u2019t sleep a wink.<\/p>\n
She wandered through the enormous house: gleaming floors, modern art, cold statues\u2026 There was no life there.<\/p>\n
No love.<\/p>\n
Only appearances.<\/p>\n
Only calculations.<\/p>\n
When all was quiet, she gathered her things. She put away the photograph of Diego as a child. She caressed it for a moment. Then she wrote a note in the trembling handwriting of years:<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, son, for remembering me.<\/p>\n
Your house is beautiful, but it\u2019s no home for an old woman like me. I\u2019m going back to where I\u2019m free, where I can breathe.<\/p>\n
To my little straw house, where I still know who I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
She opened the door carefully, as if afraid of waking him.<\/p>\n
She looked at the enormous house one last time.<\/p>\n
And she left.<\/p>\n
Barefoot.<\/p>\n
Alone.<\/p>\n
But with a peace that no marble could give her.<\/p>\n
At dawn, Diego found the note.<\/p>\n
And something broke inside him.<\/p>\n
He ran out into the street, desperate, calling for his mother as he had when he was a child.<\/p>\n
But Do\u00f1a Elena was already far away, heading for the village, her head held high and her heart free.<\/p>\n