She wandered aimlessly, weeping, until she reached a main avenue. She had no money, no home, no husband. She was alone. Completely alone. And then, like a flash of lightning in her memory, she remembered. She remembered her mother's voice pleading at the door. She remembered how she had left her alone. Guilt struck her so hard that she had to sit down on the sidewalk. "Mom..." she moaned. "Will you still be alive? Will you forgive me?"
Carolina didn't know where her mother was. She thought perhaps she was in a nursing home or, God forbid, dead. But something inside her, a primal instinct, told her she had to find her. She got up and walked toward the only church she knew near her old life, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish, where she had once seen her mother pray. Perhaps someone there knew something. It was a long journey. She didn't even have enough for the bus fare. So she started walking. Step by step. The prodigal daughter began her return home, not knowing if she still had one.
CHAPTER 7: THE OPEN DOOR
Carolina arrived at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish dragging her feet. Her designer shoes were torn and caked with mud. Her stomach growled with hunger. When she asked about her mother, Sister Clara looked at her with a mixture of pity and sternness. “Your mother is fine, child. Better than ever. God has done her justice.” The nun wrote an address on a small piece of paper. “Go there. And when you get there, beg her forgiveness on your knees, because that woman is a saint.”
Carolina took a bus with the coins the nun had given her. The ride to San Ángel seemed endless. When she got off on the cobblestone street and looked for the address, she stopped dead in her tracks. In front of her stood a beautiful colonial house, covered in green vines and with a garden that smelled of roses and damp earth. "It can't be..." Carolina thought. "They've got the wrong address. My mother can't live here."
