“This is only the beginning.”
After hanging up the phone, I sat in the kitchen with my coffee and thought about Angelica. She had been in Dubai for three weeks and I hadn’t heard a single word from her—not a call, not a message, not even a photo. For her, I had ceased to exist the moment she got the money she needed.
But I knew that would change soon.
I decided to visit the beach house in La Union. I took the bus north, the same trip Ramon and I had taken hundreds of times. The house looked exactly as I remembered it—small, cream-painted, with a little balcony facing the sea. The new owners had added potted plants, but everything else was the same.
I sat on the curb across the street and watched the house for almost an hour. I remembered the summers when Angelica was little, running across the sand, building sandcastles. Ramon grilling fish outside while I made ensaladang talong in the kitchen. Angelica bringing classmates, then boyfriends, then eventually Eduardo.
All those happy moments had been reduced to a simple business transaction in her eyes.
An elderly man stepped out of the house and noticed me.
“Ma’am, are you alright?”
“Yes, thank you. Just remembering.”
“You knew the old owners?”
“Yes… very well.”
“What a pity what happened,” he sighed. “They told us the elderly lady was very ill and needed to sell fast.”
I felt my stomach tighten.
“They said the daughter handled everything because the mother couldn’t. But now the real owners are saying the sale wasn’t legal. We had to return the house.”
