Chapter 74: Echoes of the Past

POV MATEO.

Almost a year had passed since the hit-and-run. I walked without a cane, without constant pain, without crutches. Only an irregular scar remained on my right leg, a pale line that reminded me how fragile life could be and how close I had come to death. The Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel had once again become my absolute refuge. I returned to my routines, to praying the rosary, to daily Mass, to the Indigenous and mestizo children who came every afternoon for catechism in Tsotsil and Spanish. It was a relative calm—the kind you know deep down will not last.

That Friday in February, the director of the children’s program came to my office with a worried expression.

“Father Mateo, there’s a boy I’m very concerned about. He comes with bruises often, sometimes cries for no apparent reason. He says he fell while playing, but…” her voice trembled, “I don’t believe him at all.”

“Who is it?”

“Samuel. He’s nine.”

I knew him well. A quiet boy, with large brown eyes and restless hands that never stayed still. He always arrived before everyone else and stayed after class helping put away books and clean the chalkboard.

That afternoon I approached him carefully. He was sitting on the last wooden bench, staring at the floor.

“Samuel,” I said softly and kindly, “is everything okay at home, son?”

He shrugged without looking up.

“Yes, Father.”

“And those bruises on your arm?”

“I fell playing soccer.”

“Are you completely sure?”

He nodded without meeting my eyes. But his lower lip was visibly trembling. I didn’t push further. I knew pressing him at that moment would be useless and counterproductive.

When class ended, I waited until all the children left. Through the classroom window, I saw a large man get out of an old, rusted truck and shout aggressively for him. The boy ran toward him with obvious fear. The man grabbed him brutally by the arm and shoved him toward the vehicle.

My stomach tightened with contained rage.

It’s not my business. I must not get involved, I repeated to myself several times. But as I watched them drive away in a cloud of dust, I couldn’t help but remember Lucía with painful clarity.

That night I didn’t sleep a single minute. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the frightened face of the child. I also remembered her face, with those same purplish bruises, with that animal fear in her honey-colored eyes.

The past seeped into everything. Into prayers, into silences, into the stone walls of the cathedral.

“Father, help me.” Her voice still echoed in my head, even though more than a year and a half had passed since that stormy night.

At dawn, I made a decision.

I looked up the boy’s address in the catechism records. It was a small apartment in a poor neighborhood on the other side of the river, an area the municipal police avoided whenever possible because of gang control.

I went without telling anyone.

The building was gray and decrepit, with cracked walls and a strong smell of dampness and garbage. I climbed narrow concrete stairs to the third floor. I knocked on the metal door. No answer. I knocked again, harder.

After a few tense seconds, the door opened just a few centimeters. A young woman peeked out with extreme caution. Her face was visibly bruised, and her gaze seemed to shatter just from looking at her.

“Mrs. Álvarez?” I asked gently.

She nodded, nervous and trembling.

“Who are you?”

“I’m Father Mateo Salazar. Your son Samuel comes to catechism with me at the cathedral.”

She hesitated for several seconds. She opened the door a bit more, reluctantly.

“Samuel isn’t here right now. He’s at elementary school.”

“I’m not here for him,” I said slowly and clearly. “I want to talk to you, ma’am.”

She lowered her gaze in shame.

“We don’t have problems, Father. Everything is fine here.”

“It isn’t. And you know it.”

Her breathing audibly caught. I saw a dark bruise on her neck, another on her right cheek, finger marks on her forearm.

“This can’t go on,” I said firmly. “You must report your husband. There are laws that protect you.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Yes, you can. There are places that can help you. There are shelters for women in Tuxtla, in San Cristóbal as well.”

She shook her head violently.

“You don’t understand, Father. If I report him, he’ll kill me. And if I leave with the boy, he’ll find us. He always finds us.”

That sentence pierced me like a red-hot spear. He finds us. He always finds us.

The exact same words Lucía had said to me when I suggested she escape from Damián.

I swallowed with difficulty.

“Please don’t stay here waiting. Don’t wait for it to get worse or for it to be too late.”

She looked directly at me, tears running down her battered cheeks.

“Father, I truly appreciate your concern, but please leave now. If he comes back and sees you here with me, he’ll kill you. Both of us.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” I said, though I knew it was only partially true.

“I am afraid. Please go before he comes back.”

Her voice was barely a broken whisper, but it carried devastating force. I nodded, defeated. There was nothing more to say at that moment.

I left the apartment with my heart heavy and constricted.

Outside, the cold mountain air struck my face. I stood in front of the deteriorated building, staring at the broken windows, not knowing exactly what to do. The memory of Lucía haunted me with unbearable intensity. It was the same story. The same fear. The same complicit silence.

I leaned my back against the cold wall and closed my eyes tightly. I told myself I must not get involved any further. The last time I did, I lost more than I could bear.

And I was still paying the emotional consequences.

I took the bus back to the cathedral. I looked through the dirty window, but I didn’t see the landscape of San Cristóbal. I only thought about how profoundly unjust everything was. How easy it was to look the other way. How difficult it was not to when your conscience screamed.

When I arrived, I went straight into the side chapel. It was empty and silent. Sunlight filtered through the new stained glass, and dust floated in the still air. I knelt before the altar with a heavy soul.

“How long, Lord?” I murmured with a broken voice. “How long must I watch suffering without being able to act?”

I received no divine answer. Only the echo of my own words bouncing off the stone walls.

That evening, during Mass, I couldn’t concentrate on the readings. Every time I looked up, I saw Mrs. Álvarez’s battered face. The pure fear in her eyes.

After the service, a group of parishioners waited to confess, but I asked them to excuse me. I couldn’t listen to anyone else’s sins when I was unable to deal with my own.

I went up to my office and locked the door. I turned on the desk lamp. On the table, the open Bible showed a verse I didn’t remember marking in red ink:

“Do not turn away from the needy who ask you for help.”

I stared at those words in silence for a long time. It was as if God were speaking directly to me, confronting me.

But I couldn’t do it. Not again. Not after Lucía.

At midnight, someone knocked on the office door with desperate blows.

It was Samuel. His eyes were completely red from crying, his jacket torn, his face dirty with tears and mucus.

“Father Mateo,” he said, trembling from head to toe, “my mom is very bad. She’s not moving.”

I felt my soul literally freeze.

“Where is your father now?”

“He left a while ago. But she won’t wake up and there’s a lot of blood.”

I ran.

The apartment was in near-total darkness. The door was half open, hanging from one hinge.

I entered without thinking about my own safety. I found her on the living room floor, unconscious, with a thick line of blood on her forehead and more blood coming from her nose. She was breathing, but barely.

I called emergency services with trembling hands. While we waited for the ambulance, I held the boy in my arms as he sobbed.

“Easy, my son. Everything will be all right. Your mother is strong.”

I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.

When the paramedics arrived with sirens and took her away on a stretcher, I stood in the dark street watching the red lights fade into the distance. Samuel cried silently beside me, shaking.

“What’s going to happen to us now, Father?” he asked in a frightened child’s voice.

I didn’t know how to answer honestly.

Hours later, back in the cathedral, I couldn’t sleep. I walked down the dark hallway, listening to the lonely echo of my footsteps. San Cristóbal slept, but I felt something inside me awakening again after months dormant.

The anger. The helplessness. The guilt. The desire to act.

That dawn, as I prayed alone before the main altar lit only by candles, I made myself a promise in a firm voice:

I would not look the other way in cowardice again.

If that meant bearing the consequences once more, so be it.

Because sometimes true faith is not proven in the comfort of the temple, but in the hell of the streets.

And I had been there before with Lucía.

I knew the price.

But this time, I was willing to pay it again.

Even if it meant breaking my vows once more.

Even if it meant losing everything I had rebuilt.

Because some battles cannot be avoided.

And this was one of them.