For seven years, every night was the same for Eduardo Monteiro.
She woke up at six o’clock sharp, not because she wanted to, but because her body had memorized the routine like someone memorizing an emergency exit. She stretched her right hand exactly 42 centimeters to the bedside table, found the alarm clock, turned it off, and returned to the same thick silence as always. She placed her bare feet on the cold marble floor, counted twelve steps to the bathroom, turned left, and took three more steps to the sink. Everything measured, everything controlled, everything in its place.
When you can’t see, disorganization isn’t just a nuisance: it’s dangerous.
Eduardo bathed with the precision of a surgeon; the soap always in the same corner, the towel always on the third chrome bar. He dressed without help: a navy blue dress shirt, impeccably tailored trousers, English shoes worth more than the combined salaries of three families. Elegant clothes that no one noticed. A perfect appearance for no one.
He descended the stairs, holding the handrail with his left hand. Twenty-three steps, no more, no less. At the bottom, his Augusto, the butler, awaited him as usual.
—Good morning, Dr. Eduardo.
—Good morning —he replied, in his usual proper, empty voice.
The breakfast table was set as if guests were about to arrive: French bread with butter, black coffee, orange juice that he never touched. The silverware was placed as if someone had used an invisible ruler. Eduardo ate in silence, listening only to his own breathing echoing in the enormous room, punctuated by the obsessive ticking of a Swiss clock on the wall.
At 7:30 he sat down at his desk. He turned on the computer and a robotic voice read emails, meeting schedules, contracts, and production figures. Eduardo ruled a textile empire without ever seeing a single piece of fabric, guided by keys and metallic voices. He typed faster than many who could see, made cold decisions, and accumulated more money than he could spend in several lifetimes.
But at midday, he ate lunch alone. And at seven in the evening came the moment he hated most of the day: dinner.
The main table had room for sixteen people. For seven years, only one chair was occupied: the one at the head, his. At the opposite end, eight meters farther away, the other chair remained empty like an open wound.
His Augusto would serve him the dish, always something perfect: steak with Madeira sauce, asparagus, smooth mashed potatoes. Eduardo would cut the meat slowly, listening to the sound of the knife scraping the French porcelain. There were no conversations, no laughter, no life. Only the echo of a man who existed, but no longer lived.
Until one night, as he was bringing the fork to his mouth, he heard small footsteps running across the marble floor.
It stopped dead in its tracks.
Someone, very short, approached him. The sound of a chair being dragged, a small effort, labored breathing. Then a high, clear, crystalline voice broke seven years of silence:
Are you alone?
Eduardo turned his head toward the sound, puzzled. He didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll sit with you,” the voice announced.
There was another noise, the little chair wobbling, a pair of small legs struggling to climb in. Then a victorious sigh:
-Ready.
Those five words, uttered by a little girl who could barely speak properly, began to shatter the darkness that had surrounded him since the accident. And Eduardo didn’t know it yet, but that little girl who had dared to invade his table of solitude was about to change not only his routine, but his entire life.
“Who are you?” he asked, still motionless.
—Clara—the girl replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world—. I’m two years old. And you?
—Fifty-two.
“Wow, how old!” he commented with absolute sincerity. “But that’s okay, my grandmother is old too, and I love her.”
Before Eduardo could react, he heard hurried footsteps and a desperate female voice.
—Clara! Where have you gone? Oh my God!
The woman stopped dead in her tracks when she saw the scene: the little girl sitting next to the boss, her little hands resting on the table.
—Sorry, Dr. Eduardo, sorry… She ran away, I was cleaning the kitchen… Clara, get down from there right now.
“No,” protested the girl, crossing her arms. “I’m having dinner with the gentleman.”
—Clara, please…
—He’s all alone, Mom! Nobody can have dinner alone, it’s very sad.
The words, so simple, pierced Eduardo’s chest like a truth no one had dared to tell him. In seven years, neither his sister, nor his partners, nor his employees had ever uttered such a phrase. No one had ever sat across from him. No one had ever questioned his loneliness.
Just a two-year-old girl.
Eduardo raised his hand, asking for silence.
“That’s fine, Doña Joana,” he said, searching for the woman’s voice. “You can leave her.”
Joana, the faxineira, was paralyzed.
—Is the gentleman certain?
“I have. Nobody should have dinner alone, right?” he repeated, echoing Clara’s own words.
The girl smiled as if she had just won a prize.
“Do you like potatoes?” Eduardo asked, moving the plate closer to where he thought she was.
—I like French fries. These are very smooth.
For the first time in a long time, the corner of her lips curled. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but it looked very much like one.
—Augusto— she called—, bring french fries for the girl. And an orange juice.
Clara applauded. Joana didn’t know whether to cry, apologize, or thank him. In the end, she just stood there, watching her daughter speak without restraint, asking why he always wore dark glasses, why he didn’t look at things, why his eyes didn’t move.
“Because I don’t see anything, Clara,” Eduardo replied bluntly.
There was a brief silence, and then the girl got off the chair, walked over to him, and took his face in her two small hands.
“Well, I’ll look out for you,” he declared, as if he were making a very important deal.
That day, Eduardo didn’t eat dinner alone. And as he went to bed, he noticed something strange: the silence in the house was still the same, but it didn’t hurt as much anymore. Perhaps because, for the first time in seven years, he had something to look forward to the next day.
Clara returned.
He came back the next night, and the next, and the next. Always at seven o’clock sharp, just as Eduardo sat down at the table. Sometimes he’d come running, shouting “Dudu, I’m here!”, other times he’d silently climb onto the chair and barely say “hello, it’s me again.” But he always showed up.
His Augustus noticed the change in the second week.
—From today on, serve two plates —Eduardo ordered—. One small one, with french fries and orange juice.
Joana tried to protest, ashamed.
—She can eat at home afterwards, there’s no need…
“The girl needs dinner,” replied the butler. “And Mr. Eduardo… well, the gentleman too.”
The house began to change. First there was a giggle in the dining room, then off-key singing in the hallway, a tiny slipper forgotten under the table, plastic blocks left abandoned near the sofa. Eduardo asked them not to put everything away immediately.
“Leave it there, Augusto,” he said one afternoon. “I like to listen when she plays.”
Clara asked about everything, had opinions on everything, got angry if there were cooked carrots on her plate, and made a scene over a simple milk pudding. Eduardo, without realizing it, began to negotiate with her like a father who both educates and gives in. Joana watched from the doorway, thrilled, while this little girl, whom many considered “too talkative,” was precisely what made the most serious man she had ever met laugh.
One night, when Clara had already left and the house had become quiet again, Joana stood for a moment by the table.
—Thank you, Dr. Eduardo… for being patient with her.
“Don’t thank me,” he replied softly. “I was going to have a child.”
The sentence fell heavily on both of them. Joana sat down slowly, not daring to interrupt. Eduardo continued:
—My wife was five months pregnant when we had the accident. We already knew it was a boy. He already had a name… Té. I… I was driving tired. And I lost them both.
Joana didn’t say “it wasn’t your fault.” She knew those phrases rarely offer comfort. She simply placed her hand on his shoulder.
“Sometimes life takes something away from us… and later gives us something else, not the same, but also valuable,” he murmured. “Clara is learning to eat carrots because of you. That’s something.”
Eduardo let out a short, sad laugh. It wasn’t the same as raising his own child, but feeling a little hand clutching his shirt, hearing a “I’ll be back tomorrow” from a child’s voice… that was filling a void he thought would never be filled again.
The change did not go unnoticed by everyone.
Renata, his sister, who for years controlled the company and a good part of Eduardo’s life “to protect him”, began to notice that he delegated more, that he no longer answered emails at any time, that at night her calls went unanswered.
One Friday he showed up unannounced at the mansion.
She went upstairs following the sound of laughter. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her brother laugh like that. She stopped in the living room doorway just in time to see something she never would have imagined: Eduardo, barefoot on the floor, laughing while a golden retriever puppy licked his face and Clara yelled, “Sol, leave Dudu’s ear alone!”
On the sofa, Joana was laughing too, wearing a simple apron, her hands still wet with soap.
“What is this?” Renata asked, clapping loudly so everyone would look at her.
The air froze. Sol barked. Clara hid behind her mother.
“Renata,” Eduardo said, standing up. “What are you doing here?”
—I came to see how you are. And now I understand that you’re… distracted. In very good company, it seems.
His eyes fixed sharply on Joana.
-You…?
—Joana… the faxineira —she replied, looking down.
Renata pursed her lips.
—Of course. The faxineira. And this girl…
—My daughter. Clara.
“Perfect.” Renata crossed her arms. “And since when does being part of the staff include playing on the floor with my brother, bringing the kids to the dinner table, and making me buy a dog?”
“Renata, that’s enough,” Eduardo interrupted, tense. “This is my house.”
“A house I’ve helped keep standing since the accident,” she retorted. “Don’t you see how dangerous this is? You’re blind, vulnerable, rich… and a poor woman with a daughter just appears in your life and starts ‘filling the void.’ Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”
The words hit like slaps. Joana felt her face burn.
“I never asked for anything,” he tried to say.
“I’m not talking to you,” Renata interrupted. “I’m talking to him.”
The rest of the day was a barrage of accusations, threats, and reports from “private investigators” that told half-truths about Joana’s past jobs. Renata even brought a lawyer, with papers ready for Eduardo to sign a clause prohibiting any employee from having emotional or financial contact with him outside of work hours under threat of legal injunction.
Eduardo felt cornered. Renata played on his greatest fear: losing the company, the house, the little autonomy he had left.
That night, he didn’t come down for dinner.
Clara waited for him at the empty table, her legs dangling, asking again and again if he was angry with her. On the second night without Eduardo, the girl climbed up to the desk door and knocked softly.
—Dudu, it’s me, Clara… don’t you like me anymore?
Eduardo felt something inside him break. He opened the door, bent down, and hugged her tightly.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, little one. It’s just that adults make things more difficult than they are.”
—So… are you having dinner with me tomorrow?
It took him a few seconds to respond.
—Tomorrow, yes.
And when she left, hating himself a little for having almost failed her, he decided that he would not let fear steal from him what he was beginning to love.
But Renata wasn’t finished. She returned with more threats, more documents, more arguments for “protection.” She spoke of lawsuits, the press, “opportunists” and “profiteers.” Eduardo, for the first time in years, raised his voice.
“I’m not going to sign anything that forbids me from choosing who I want to have dinner with,” she said, trembling, but resolute.
Renata replied that she would then go to court. That she would request his guardianship. That she would prove he was unfit to decide his own life. Eduardo felt the ground tremble beneath his feet; a part of him still believed that perhaps he deserved this punishment, that perhaps simply being alive was too great a gift.
When Joana arrived that morning with Clara in tow, her Augusto stopped her at the door.
“The doctor’s sister was here,” he explained sadly. “He’s very ill. He locked himself in his office.”
Joana understood everything without anyone explaining it to her in detail. She hugged her daughter tightly.
—We’re not having dinner here tonight, my love.
“Why?” Clara asked, her eyes filled with tears. “Dudu is my friend!”
Joana swallowed the lump in her throat.
—Sometimes… great friends have great problems. And they need time.
That night, Clara fell asleep crying, calling for Dudu. And Joana, alone in the kitchen of her small apartment, wrote a letter. She thanked Eduardo for letting her daughter into that house, for treating her with kindness, for buying a dog just because she asked him to. She explained that they would be going to the countryside, to her sister’s house, because she knew that “people like her” didn’t mix with “people like him.”
He only asked for one thing:
“Don’t go back to silence. Don’t go back to loneliness. You deserve better.”
Eduardo clutched the letter to his chest. When his Augusto finished reading, he could barely breathe. Inside the envelope was a drawing: two stick figures, one big and one small, holding hands. Below, in crooked letters, it said: “Dudu + Clara, friends forever.”
—Augusto—she said, jumping to her feet—. Do you know where Joana lives?
—I know, sir.
—Take me. Now.
The walk to Joana’s house was a battle against time. Traffic stopped because of an accident, the rain poured down, and Eduardo refused to stay in the car. He got out, let Augusto guide him, ran even though he wasn’t used to it, tripped, hurt his knee, and bled. It didn’t matter.
Every step was a decision: this time he wasn’t going to run away, he wasn’t going to give up, he wasn’t going to let fear speak for him.
When they finally reached the green gate with the number 428, Eduardo banged on it forcefully.
—Joana!
Nothing.
He knocked again. A neighbor came out of the house next door.
“She left,” he said sadly. “She left this morning, with the little girl and the suitcases.”
The world stopped. Eduardo felt that all his effort had been in vain, as if he were reliving the accident: too late again, losing those he loved once more. He dropped to his knees on the wet ground, resting his forehead against the icy bars.
Then he heard a small, high-pitched, unmistakable voice calling his name:
—Dudu!
Eduardo raised his head, in disbelief.
—Mom, it’s him, it’s Dudu!
The hurried footsteps drew nearer. Clara stood on the other side of the gate, soaked from the rain, her eyes shining.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, both surprised and happy.
“I came to find you,” he replied, his voice breaking.
Joana came running, carrying a suitcase in one hand and a broken umbrella in the other. She froze when she saw him bloody, trembling, clinging to the bars as if his life depended on them.
—Dr. Eduardo…
“Don’t go,” he said, almost stumbling as she opened the gate. “Please don’t go.”
“I can’t stay,” Joana whispered. “Her sister…”
—My sister can worry about whatever she wants. I’ve already decided.
—And your company? Your house? Your money?
Eduardo took a deep breath.
—None of that makes sense if I go back to having dinner alone.
Clara pulled on her sack.
—Did you really come for me?
“For you, for your mother, for Sol, for this life you brought into this world,” he replied. “I don’t want to lose you.”
Joana looked at him, with fear, with love, with doubts that only someone who has been poor and judged all her life could understand.
“I’m not Beatriz,” she murmured. “Clara isn’t Té. We’re not going to replace them.”
“I know,” Eduardo said. “I don’t need them replaced. I need them to be here.”
Joana closed her eyes. She was terrified that it would all end in the worst way, but for the first time she felt that, even if the end was painful, it was worth trying. She hugged him tightly, as if she were embracing an opportunity she never thought would come. Clara wrapped her tiny arms around them and shouted between laughter and sobs:
—Group hug!
There, in the rain of an ordinary neighborhood in São Paulo, three people who had nothing found everything.
A week later, Renata returned to the mansion with the papers ready.
She entered the living room determined to force her brother to sign. What she didn’t expect was to find him standing upright, with Joana by his side and Clara in his arms.
“I’m not going to sign,” Eduardo said before she could speak.
—If you don’t sign, I’ll go to court.
—Do what you want. I’m bringing my lawyers too. I’m blind, not stupid.
Renata looked at him as if she didn’t recognize him. For years she had seen him broken, listless, obedient. Now there was something new about him: determination.
“Do you really feel something for them?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
—I don’t “feel anything.” I love them —he replied without hesitation—. And I’m tired of living to avoid the risk of suffering.
Renata looked at Joana, then at Clara; for the first time, she saw beyond prejudice. She saw how the little girl clung to Eduardo’s neck as if that man were her safe harbor. She saw how Joana held his hand with respect, not ambition. She saw the light in a pair of eyes that had not seen.
She put the papers in her bag.
“You’re an idiot,” she said, her voice breaking. “But you’re my idiot. If she hurts you, I swear…”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Joana interrupted firmly.
Renata nodded, turned around, and left. That door, which for years had closed amid heavy silences, closed again, this time leaving something inside that had never before inhabited the mansion: a family.
Time passed.
The mansion was no longer a silent museum, but a living house. The pristine hallway floor bore the paw prints that Augusto had chosen to leave. The library, once untouched, now had Clara’s drawings pasted on the shelves. The kitchen always smelled of something baking, sometimes delicious, sometimes burnt.
And the dinner table… no longer showed fifteen empty chairs and one occupied, but three place settings every night at seven: Eduardo at the head, Clara on the right, Joana on the left.
Eduardo began to delegate within the company, to trust a new CEO. He finally understood that his value wasn’t measured by how many contracts he could read in a day, but by how much laughter he could hear in his own home.
One Saturday afternoon, he called Joana and Clara into the living room. He was holding a small box. His legs were trembling more than on the day of the accident.
“I have something important to say,” he announced.
Clara sat on the sofa, moving her legs curiously.
—Is it a surprise?
“More or less,” Eduardo smiled.
He knelt in front of Joana, opened the small box containing a simple but meaningful ring, and took a deep breath.
“Joana Martins, you came here to clean floors… and you ended up cleaning my soul,” he said, with nervous humor. “You gave me back my laughter, my hope, and my will to live. I don’t want to spend a single day without you and Clara. Will you marry me?”
Joana put her hands to her mouth, with tears in her eyes.
“Mom, say yes!” Clara shouted. “I want a wedding!”
Joana looked at the man she had known broken, who now offered himself whole, albeit with scars.
“Are you sure?” he whispered.
—More than any contract I’ve ever signed in my life.
She smiled through her tears.
—Then yes.
Clara’s joyful cry mingled with Sol’s barking. Eduardo hugged Joana and, for the first time, said aloud what his heart had long known:
-I love you.
Joana answered without hesitation:
-I love you too.
Three months later, they married on the veranda of the mansion, decorated with white flowers. There weren’t hundreds of guests, famous photographers, or magazine covers. There were about twenty people: Joana’s simple family, a few friends, her emotional Augusto, and a Renata who cried, hiding behind the excuse of “allergies.”
Clara, in a pink dress, was the little lady who scattered petals everywhere, especially on Sol, who was trying to eat them. Eduardo, in a light-colored suit, waited for Joana to the sound of a violin. He couldn’t see her enter, but he could feel the admiring silence of the others and the soft perfume that always accompanied her.
They exchanged simple vows: she promised to make him laugh every day, he promised never to eat dinner alone again. They kissed amidst applause, and Clara announced at the top of her lungs:
—Now Dudu is my dad!
Eduardo carried her in his arms.
“If you want it, I want it,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion.
Five years later, on a quiet afternoon, Eduardo sat on the veranda with a sleeping baby in his arms: Té, two months old, the son he never thought he would have. Clara, eight years old, read aloud from a book she chose each night. Joana, beside her, knitted something small, perhaps a blanket, perhaps a new way of saying “I’m taking care of you” without words.
Sol slept at his feet, older, but just as loyal.
“What are you thinking about?” Joana asked.
—In how we got here —replied Eduardo, smiling—. In how a two-year-old girl dared to ask me if I was alone and decided to sit with me.
Clara lowered the book for a moment.
—Dudu.
-Yeah?
Are you happy?
Eduardo felt Té’s warm weight on his chest, heard Joana’s laughter, the whisper of the garden leaves, the calm heartbeat that he had finally learned to recognize as peace.
—Yes, daughter. I am very happy.
She smiled contentedly and went back to reading.
Eduardo closed his eyes, which hadn’t seen for so long, but which, for the first time, took in everything: love, light, the future. He gave thanks for having survived the accident, for having found Joana, for having let Clara in that first night.
And she understood, at last, that the meaning of life wasn’t to avoid suffering or loss, but to keep walking even when it hurts, even when it’s scary, even when you feel blind and lost. Because sometimes, at the end of a very long tunnel of darkness, the light doesn’t arrive in the form of a grand miracle, but in the form of a disheveled little girl who climbs onto a chair that’s too big for her and asks with the utmost naturalness:
“Are you alone? I’ll sit with you.”
And those five words, spoken with the scent of cheap shampoo and a beautiful stubbornness, are enough to change everything forever.
