I was left at the threshold of a stranger’s apartment. Twenty-five years later, she came to work as my housekeeper, unaware that the woman she was serving was the daughter she abandoned.
“What is a child without roots? Nothing. Just a ghost that happens to find a body to inhabit.”
“Have you always felt like a ghost?” Miguel asked, slowly stirring his coffee in my spacious kitchen.
I looked at him. He was the only one who knew the whole truth. The one who helped me find her: the woman who carried me in her womb and then discarded me as if I were nothing.
My first cry didn’t soften her heart. All she left was a note in a cheap blanket: “Forgive me.” One word. All the love I would never know.
Luisa Martínez and Ernesto Sánchez, an older childless couple, found me one October morning. They opened the door and saw a crying bundle. They had enough compassion not to send me to an orphanage, but not enough to love me.
“You live in our house, Alejandra, but remember: you’re a stranger to us, and we to you,” Luisa would say every year on the anniversary of my discovery.
Their apartment was my cage. They gave me a corner in the hallway with a fold-up bed. I ate separately, their leftover cold food. The clothes they bought at flea markets were always two sizes too big. “You’ll grow into them,” she would say. But by the time I did, the clothes were falling apart.
At school, I was the outcast. “Child of no one,” “abandoned,” they whispered behind my back.
I didn’t cry. What for? I kept everything inside: strength, anger, determination. Every insult, every cold stare was fuel.
At thirteen, I started working: handing out flyers, walking dogs. I hid the money in a crack in the floor. One day, Luisa found it.
“Did you steal this?” she asked, clutching the crumpled bills. “I knew blood doesn’t lie…”
“It’s mine. I earned it,” I replied.
She threw it on the table.
“Then pay. For the food. For the roof. It’s time.”
At fifteen, I worked every free minute. At seventeen, I left for university, in another city. I left with a backpack and a box: inside was my only treasure, a photo of me as a newborn, taken by a nurse before my “mother” took me from the hospital.
“She never loved you, Ale,” Luisa said as we said goodbye. “Neither did we. But at least we were honest.”
At the dorm, I shared a room with three girls. I ate instant noodles. I studied until I dropped: only top grades, only scholarships. At night, I worked at a 24-hour supermarket. My classmates laughed at my worn-out clothes. I didn’t hear them. I only heard one voice inside: I’ll find her. I’ll show her what she threw away.
There is nothing more terrible than feeling that no one cares about you. It sinks into your skin like splinters, impossible to remove.
Miguel knew my story. He knew how I got through it. How I moved forward, as if I were suffocating.
“You know this won’t bring you peace,” he warned me once.
“I don’t want peace,” I replied. “I want to close this chapter.”
Life is unpredictable. Sometimes, it gives you a chance when you least expect it. In my third year, a professor asked us to design a marketing strategy for a natural cosmetics brand.
I spent three sleepless days. All the pain, all the hunger for recognition came out in that project. When I presented it, the room fell silent.
A week later, my professor barged into my office.
“Alejandra! Investors from Barcelona saw your work. They want to meet.”
They offered me a stake in the business, not a salary. I signed, trembling: I had nothing to lose.
A year later, the project took off. My share turned into money I never imagined. Enough for a down payment on an apartment in the city center, for new investments.
Everything happened fast. By twenty-three, I had my home: spacious, bright. I only brought my backpack and that box. The past was behind me.
But there was no happiness. Only emptiness.
“You carry a ghost on your shoulders,” Miguel said.
And I nodded. That was when he offered me help. He wasn’t just my friend, he was also a private detective. Two years of searching. Hundreds of dead ends. Until he found her.
Irene Molina. 47 years old. Divorced. She lived on the outskirts, in a dilapidated block. Occasional jobs. No children. “No children”: those words burned me more than anything.
He showed me her photo. A face worn by life. Eyes without light.
“Find her a job,” Miguel said. “Clean apartments. Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” I replied.
We posted an ad. Miguel did the interview at my desk. I watched from a hidden camera.
“Do you have experience, Irene?” he asked in a professional tone.
“Yes,” her cracked fingers twisted. “Hotels, offices… I work hard.”
“The employer is demanding. Immaculate cleaning, punctuality.”
“I understand. I need this job…”
Her broken voice, her hunched back. No trace of her pride.
“You’re hired on probation,” Miguel announced.
When she left, she left her ID on the table. The document of the woman who gave me life and took away love.
“Do you really want to keep going?” he asked.
“Now more than ever,” I replied.
A week later, she entered my house. With rags and a smell of lemon. A shadow bent from my past.
The first encounter was brief. A dry greeting, pretending to be busy.
She didn’t recognize me. I only saw the fear of losing any job.
I watched her scrub my floors, iron my blouses, polish my mirrors. I left tips: not out of pity, but so she would come back.
Two months. Eight cleanings. Irene became invisible in my home.
Sometimes I caught her gaze on my photos: in front of the Sagrada Familia, at conferences, with partners. She would scrutinize my face. And I would wonder: Does she know?
Miguel grumbled:
“You’re torturing her. And yourself.”
Maybe. But I couldn’t stop.
Until everything changed.
One day she stopped in front of a shelf of books. She picked up my graduation photo. I, from the door, saw her trembling fingers caress the frame.
I walked closer.
“Do you recognize me?” I asked, cold.
The photo trembled in her hands. She turned, scared like a thief.
“Sorry… The dust irritates my eyes…”
I sat down, my heart racing.
“Sit down,” I ordered.
She obeyed, on the edge of the chair.
“You look so much like…” she whispered. “A little girl. A long time ago…”
I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Irene, twenty-five years ago, you left a baby in a doorway. A little girl. Alejandra. Look at me.”
She raised her gaze. And she understood.
I pulled out that one photo.
“This is me. You abandoned me. Why?”
Her face crumbled. She fell to her knees.
“I was young. Your father left us. My parents threw me out. I didn’t know what to do…”
“And you threw me away?” “And threw me away like garbage?” My voice sounded colder than the marble of my floor, but in the end, after all these years, I could only close my eyes and whisper, “Twenty minutes. After that, I want this house to shine as if you’ve never been here.”