Her parents saw her as they were passing by with the cart full of bags.

“Claudia!” they said in unison, surprised to find her so settled in behind the information desk.

The woman with the bangs looked at her openmouthed, and she, Claudia, lowered her eyes.

The misunderstanding was fixed with some uncomfortable laughter and some smiling and head-shaking from her parents. All of them laughing, as if it were a scene from Home Alone. No one asked for explanations. No one doubted that they were Claudia’s parents, or that she was Claudia and not Teresa.

Children don’t lie, but adults are the ones you believe.

The final words are adult.

When she snapped out of the memory, she’d already tossed the cigarette butt and was washing her hands before the mirror.

That’s what I would do, she said to herself again as she came out of the bathroom, and then she looked around for the little girl.

There she was, standing with a guard, trying to ignore his objections and go out through the library’s other door. Lost.

She smiled and went toward her.

“You have to go out through that door over there,” she said, and the girl shot her a quick glance and went back to staring at the wrong door.

The guard seemed even more disconcerted at her intervention in the matter. “Why through the other door? Is she with you?”

Neither of them cleared up his confusion. They moved away from him.

“There’s your dad, see him?” she said, and then she also traced an invisible line with her arm, like the wake of a torpedo moving through water.

The girl didn’t respond or move, just looked up at her with that flirtatious gaze.

“Your dad. There. Your dad?”

He was no more than twenty meters away. Through the window Claudia could clearly see the man who was handsome and knew it. Sitting down. There he was. Even a three-year-old would have known how to get back, but the girl’s eyes were empty, as if she were blind.

Claudia turned back toward the guard, uncomfortable. She tried to catch the father’s attention with some ridiculous gestures. He wasn’t even looking inside. He seemed very entertained with his own fists and the time on his hands. What could she do? The man was already part of her past. She couldn’t go back out now, she couldn’t turn back the clock. And with the little girl in tow! She took a few steps in the direction her own index finger was pointing, and then the girl took her other hand.

All right. So that’s how it’ll be.

They walked toward the exit holding hands, and finally the man saw them through the glass.

He opened his eyes wide and jumped to his feet.