The Weight Of Paper

The small desk lamp was the only light on in the dark room. Outside, the sky was completely black. It was the quiet time right before the sun comes up. Inside the study, Marisol felt like time had stopped.

Marisol rubbed her eyes with her hands. Her skin felt dry and hot because she was so tired. She had not slept at all. For hours, she did nothing but open her father’s old metal filing cabinets. She even broke a nail trying to force open a locked drawer. She pulled out folders that had dust on them because no one had touched them in years.

The papers on the floor told a very scary story about her father.

Alejandro Duarte was not the successful, proud businessman everyone thought he was. He was a man who was drowning in bad choices. There were secret loans from banks far away. There were papers showing he missed payments for three whole years. There were final warnings written in big, bold letters. Every time she opened a new paper, her father’s handwriting looked worse. It looked shaky, like he was terrified while signing his name.

The numbers on the papers were too big to be real.

"Oh, Papa," Marisol whispered into the empty room. A single tear ran down her cheek and wet the paper in her hand.

The numbers did not just mean they were in trouble. They meant the vineyard was already gone. If she sold the tractors, the big wooden wine barrels, and every single bottle of wine in the cellar, it would still not be enough. It would not even pay a small part of what they owed.

She felt desperate. At four in the morning, she took her phone and waited by the window. As soon as the clock hit six, she called three different banks. Her family had worked with these banks for many years. But the calls were short and useless. The bank workers spoke to her in sad, nice voices, but they all said the same thing.

"We are so sorry about your father, Ms. Duarte. But we cannot help you with this loan. This money was not borrowed from a normal bank. We cannot do anything about it."

The debt was not with a bank. It was with a man.

Suddenly, Marisol saw a shadow by the door. Her heart jumped into her throat, and she gasped. But it was only her younger sister, Camila. Camila was wearing a big white sweater that made her look very small and sad. Her eyes were red from crying, and her dark hair was a messy tangle.

Camila stopped and stared at the mess of papers all over the floor and the desk. "Mars? What are you doing? Have you been awake all night?"

"I couldn't sleep," Marisol said. Her voice sounded dry and scratchy because she was so tired.

Camila walked into the room. She was very careful not to step on the papers. She picked up a bright red paper from the desk. As she read the numbers, all the color left her face. She dropped the paper back down, and her breath shook.

"I... I always knew he was keeping secrets," Camila said in a soft, trembling voice. She wrapped her arms around her own body. "He used to sit in front of the computer late at night. He stopped laughing, Mars. He stopped drinking his own wine. But I never thought it was this bad. We owe millions of dollars."

"We don't owe money to a company," Marisol said. She bit her lip so hard it hurt. "We owe Theeeee Ramirez."

Camila sat down fast on the edge of the couch. She looked up at Marisol with big, scared eyes. "Then what do we do? We can never pay this back, Mars. Never. Maybe... maybe we should go to them? We can go to the Ramirez house and talk to The ceo. We can beg him for more time. We can plead with him. He is a human being, Mars. He won't throw two sad, crying girls out of their house right after their father died."

"Beg him?"

The word felt like poison to Marisol. Suddenly, she felt a hot wave of anger inside her chest. The anger woke her up completely. She stood up so fast that her chair made a loud, ugly noise against the floor.

"I would rather die than beg a Ramirez," Marisol said. Her voice was cold and hard. She walked over to the window and looked out at the grey morning fog on the hills. "They have been waiting for this exact moment. Oh!!! That was why he came for the funeral yesterday......You saw him yesterday at the funeral, Camila. He did not come because he was sad about Papa. He came to look at the land he is going to take from us. He wants to see us beg. He wants to see a Duarte on her knees."

"But Mars, look at these papers!" Camila cried out. She sounded like she was going to scream. "We don't have a choice!"

"We always have a choice," Marisol said, turning around to look at her sister. Her hands were tight balls at her sides. "I am not giving up. This land belonged to our mother, and it belonged to our grandparents. I am going to work my absolute ass off to pay every single dollar we owe. I will work in the dirt myself. I will sell the wine myself. I will stop spending money on everything until it hurts, but I will never ask that man for mercy."

Camila just looked at her. She looked surprised, but she also looked very worried. "Mars, you can't just"

Suddenly, they heard a loud sound outside. It was the crunching sound of tires moving on the gravel driveway.

Both sisters stopped talking. They froze.

The loud, heavy sound of a car engine filled the quiet morning air. It was coming up the long driveway toward the house. It was not a delivery truck, and it was not the workers.

Marisol turned around quickly and looked out the window. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt her ribs.

A big, shiny black SUV stopped in the middle of the yard. The dark windows looked like mirrors in the morning light. The driver turned off the engine, and everything became completely quiet and scary.

The car door opened. A man stepped out into the cold morning air. He adjusted the sleeves of his dark grey suit. He did not have an invite. He did not call before coming. He did not care.

Adrian Ramirez looked up at the big house. His sharp, dark eyes looked straight at the window where Marisol was standing, like he knew exactly where she was.

He was here. And he was coming to see her right now.