The tension left by Horacio's brief and disconcerting appearance still hung in the dining room air, mixed with the lingering aroma of Yucatecan food. Fernando and Ruby had finished eating, but their gazes kept returning to Lysandra, who, despite her initial pallor, now seemed to have regained a surprising, almost defiant composure.
It was she who broke the silence, a playful smile curving her lips as she pushed her plate away. "One hundred dollars?" she repeated, as if reading the unasked question in Fernando's mind. "It's really not much, little brother. Or is it that you two," her violet gaze rested first on Fernando and then on Ruby with a mischievous spark, "aren't generous?"
Fernando blinked, surprised by the change in tone. "Generous? Lys, you gave the equivalent of several days' work to a delivery guy you barely know."
"Knew," she corrected softly. "And life takes many turns, don't you think? Besides," she leaned back in her chair, an amused glint in her eyes, "it's not the first time my 'generosity' has struck you as peculiar." She recalled the time when, after a spectacular dinner at 'Pampas,' that famous Brazilian steakhouse with its skewers of meat and impeccable service, she had been so impressed by the attention and warmth of a particularly attentive waiter—a young student who had told her between slices of picanha that he was saving up for his music studies—that, in addition to the usual tip, she had gifted him an old silver coin from her personal collection. "It was a beautiful coin, from the 18th century, with an incredible patina. The young man almost cried with emotion. He said he'd keep it as a good luck charm."
A genuine laugh escaped Fernando. "I remember! Dad almost choked on his caipirinha. He said you were crazy, that the coin was worth a fortune."
"It was worth a story," Lysandra retorted, shrugging elegantly. "And that young man gave us an unforgettable experience with his service, his passion for what he did, despite it being a temporary job for him. To recognize that, to value the effort and humanity in another… isn't that also a form of wealth?"
The night, which had begun with the tension of the encounter with Horacio, suddenly felt lighter, almost fun. Lysandra's reasoning, though eccentric to some, had an impeccable internal logic, a coherence with her way of seeing the world, of valuing echoes and stories above the purely material.
But as Lysandra smiled, satisfied with her little dialectical victory, Fernando and Ruby exchanged an almost imperceptible glance. Lysandra's words, her spontaneous gesture towards Horacio, and now the anecdote of the silver coin, had struck an unexpected chord in both of them.
«Generous?» Fernando thought, his smile fading a little as Lysandra's question resonated within him. He donated to charities, of course, the ones his company sponsored, the ones that looked good in annual reports. But like this, personally, spontaneously, to someone serving him a meal or delivering a package? He remembered the anonymous faces of the hundreds of workers on his massive construction sites in China, the waiters in the luxury restaurants where he closed million-dollar deals. Had he ever stopped to think of them as individuals, beyond their function? «Do I only think about the magnitude of my projects and never about the people who make them possible, about those around me day to day?» he questioned himself with growing discomfort. «Is it true I haven't been able to recognize the individual worth of my own workers, of the people who serve me?»
Ruby, for her part, also sank into silent reflection. She, who sought wisdom in ancient philosophies and pursued understanding of the mysteries of life and death, had she truly been generous in her dealings with others on a human, everyday level? She traveled the world, interacted with countless people, but how many times had she stopped to truly see the individual behind the service, to offer a gesture that went beyond polite transaction? Her relationship with Fernando was intense, yes, but it often unfolded in a bubble, focused on her own intellectual pursuits or the whirlwind of his projects. «Could it be that, in our search for the transcendental or the monumental,» she wondered, feeling a slight sting of self-criticism, «we've forgotten simple humanity, the direct connection with those who merely cross our path and facilitate our existence? Have we only thought of ourselves, of our grand plans, and not of the network of people that sustains us?»
Lysandra's question, tossed out almost as a joke, had landed with the precision of an arrow, triggering unexpected introspection in her two companions. The night in Thorne Mansion, far from settling down, continued to unveil layers, not only of family secrets, but also of the complexities of the heart and conscience of those who inhabited it, even temporarily. Lysandra's "crazy" generosity had turned out to be an uncomfortable but necessary mirror.