Chapter 5 What Gabriel found

The afternoon had fallen with a thick, almost offensive calm. It was one of those warm afternoons when the city seems to wait for something inevitable to happen. From his bedroom window, Gabriel watched the dull silhouette of the horizon. In the distance, a lazy, lingering column of smoke still rose, as if the Foundation fire refused to become just a memory.

He clenched his fists in the pockets of his sweatshirt and stood there, still, as if looking at the smoke might give him answers. But there weren't any. Only questions. And a silence that was too loud inside his house.

"It's not just a fire," he whispered to himself, his voice barely breaking. "It's a message."

Since that early morning, Amelia had become a different person. Not in the obvious, but in her small gestures: her gaze seemed to scan the shadows, her way of closing doors was quicker, more definitive. She slept little. She spoke less. Her motherly smile had faded, leaving her with an alert expression, like someone afraid everything would shatter at the slightest noise.

Luciano, for his part, spoke in whispers when he answered the phone and avoided eye contact for too long. And what disturbed Gabriel most was that Isabelita didn't respond to his messages. None. As if the fire had also destroyed communication between them.

And Tomás... Tomás cried at night. He cried in his sleep, as if his soul knew things his conscience couldn't explain.

Gabriel went down to the basement that same afternoon, more out of instinct than choice. He wasn't looking for anything concrete. Maybe he wanted to reconnect with some part of himself that wasn't tainted by fear. He thought of his old comics, the ones Amelia had hidden from him when he was twelve, because "they were full of gratuitous violence." Maybe now, that violence wouldn't seem so gratuitous.

He began to go through boxes, moving things clumsily and hastily. The basement smelled of damp and old wood, and every creak of the floor above him seemed like a warning.

That's when he saw it.

A small, dark wooden box with no visible markings. The rusty padlock seemed more decorative than functional. It wasn't hidden, but its presence felt out of place, as if someone had left it there on purpose... hoping he'd find it.

Gabriel bent down and examined the lock. Without thinking twice, he rummaged through his tools for an old pair of pliers and inserted it into the padlock. He barely applied any force when he heard a sharp "crack." The sound gave him instant satisfaction, as if he'd opened not just a box, but a secret door inside the house.

Inside was a notebook covered in gray cloth, frayed at the corners. It bore no name or date, just a label taped on with old tape. In childlike, barely legible handwriting, it said:

"Do Not Open."

Gabriel gave a short, bitter laugh. "Too late," he thought. He opened the notebook.

The first pages were full of drawings. Scribbles. Paintings in black pen, anxious, intense, almost violent strokes.

A house on fire, drawn over and over again. From different angles. The windows looked like screaming eyes. The door, an open mouth swallowing fire. With each page, the fire seemed higher. More vivid. More intentional.

Then, human figures appeared: a faceless woman, a child with a scar on his forehead, a tall man with a dark hat and hidden eyes. No one had a name. But something inside Gabriel recognized them.

He turned the pages with a growing knot in his chest. At the bottom of one, almost hidden among the drawings, he read a sentence written in shaky handwriting:

"Dad wasn't who you think."

He stood still. He felt a sudden chill run down his spine, as if the air in the basement had suddenly dropped several degrees. And the worst part was that it didn't surprise him. He'd sensed it for years. Since he was little, he'd noticed cracks in his mother's stories. Gaps in Luciano's anecdotes. Shared silences. Nameless inherited fears.

He turned the page. A new drawing. This time, a rag doll girl hanging from a rope. Above it, in vibrant red: "GUILT."

Gabriel slammed the notebook shut. The basement suddenly grew darker, or maybe it was just that he saw things differently now.

He climbed the stairs slowly, hiding the notebook under his sweater. He avoided Amelia. He didn't want dinner. He pretended to be sleepy and locked himself in his room. From there, he listened to the house as if it were another house. Amelia's voice in the kitchen, soft and muffled, like a song repeated to avoid thinking. Tomás's crying, which wasn't a cry of physical pain, but of something deeper. And the metallic click of Luciano's study door, locking itself. Always locked.

Gabriel got under the covers and turned on his cell phone's flashlight. He opened his notebook again.

He read slowly. Every word seemed like a testimony. Every drawing, a confession.

On the last page, something was written in red marker. Words that seemed like a sentence:

"He thought it was out of love.

But fire doesn't embrace, Gabriel.

Fire destroys."

The notebook trembled in his hands. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth.

He didn't sleep. Not out of fear.

Out of rage.

That night, Gabriel understood that his family's stories weren't hearth tales or inherited anecdotes: they were ruins buried beneath layers of silence. And he had just unearthed a part of it. Small, perhaps. But enough to change him.

The fire wasn't just a symbol. It was a living warning. And now it burned inside him.