When it was over, I sat down at the table by the window, where the sun lay across the cloth.
My hands were shaking.
Noelia came and stood beside me.
She was in a plain white shirt, with her apron still folded in her hands.
“Mr. Meza,” she said.
“It was you, the whole time.”
“It was you at my table.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“For all of it.”
“Noelia, you have a job here as long as there’s a Graciela’s.”
She was already nodding, with tears running down.
Then Detective Trevino pulled out a chair opposite me and sat down, with the Cardenas contract in a plastic sleeve.
“Alonzo,” she said.
“There’s one more thing you should look at.”
She turned the third page over.
“Look at the bottom of the back.”
There, in tiny gray type, almost invisible, it said:
Page 1 of 1.
“Your signature isn’t on this contract,” said Detective Trevino.
