Querido hijo, estás despedido
The envelope was a pale, creamy ivory—the kind reserved for wedding invitations or formal condolences. When Mateo saw his mother’s handwriting on the front, he smiled. Mamá still believed in handwritten things: recipes, thank-you notes, letters sealed with a drop of wax. He sliced it open with the impatience of a son who assumes he is forever loved without condition.
For a full minute, he read it again and again, thinking it was a joke. Perhaps the punchline to a running gag about how he never returned the hedge trimmer. But the ink was too steady, the paper too crisp. He read on.