He opened the envelope.
Inside was a letter written with my father’s handwriting.
It turned out that, during the months before his death, my father had been preparing something for me.
I had gathered photographs of my childhood, letters from my mother, small school grades and even old cards that I had given her when I was a child.
I had asked Richard to keep everything in a safe place.
But the biggest surprise.s. was still inside the suitcase.
There were documents.
Años atrás, mi padre había abierto una pequeña cuenta de ahorros a mi nombre y había estado depositando dinero en ella cada mes.
No eran grandes cantidades.
Sometimes, only twenty or thirty dollars.
But over the years, he had accumulated enough so that he could finally pursue the dream my father knew since my college years.
Open my own little photography studio.
I sat on the edge of the bed and started crying.
“Why did you never tell me?”
Richard smiled with sadness.
“Because I wanted you to choose your own life. And if at twenty-seven you still wanted to fulfill the same dream, then I should bring you here.”
He then pointed to the last photograph hanging on the wall.
It was the last photo my father and me together.
Below was a single sentence written with its lyrics.
“If I can’t be there when she starts chasing her dream, let my brother be by her side in my place.”
I looked at Richard.
Just a few hours earlier he had been about to flee from it.
Now he was sitting in front of me, trying to hold back his own tears.
“So… that’s why you were behaving so strangely?”
It laughs softly.
“I’ve never been good at keeping secrets.”
That night we stayed in room 214 until almost midnight, opening my father’s letters one by one.
Three months later, I opened my little photography studio.
On the opening day, the first image I posted on the wall was not one of my own photographs.
It was an old picture of my father and Richard when they were young.
And below I wrote a single sentence:
“Sometimes, the door you’re most afraid to open hides not your greatest fear… but the love of someone who has been waiting for you for years.”
