I lied to an old woman every Thursday for six months, looking her in the face.
I told him the system was faulty. That the app had a bug. That “the algorithm” sometimes added things to orders without anyone requesting them.
It was the only way she would let me save her life… without forcing her to bow her head.
My name is Álvaro. I work as a delivery driver for one of those apps where you’re not a person: you’re just a dot on a map, an estimated time, a rating at the end. You pick up, you deliver, you leave. No names, no stories. Just a rush.
Until Doña Carmen appeared.
She lived on the outskirts of town, in a small house with a facade weathered by the winters. The garden gate creaked. The mailbox was crooked. And yet, everything was so well cared for that it showed: someone had spent their whole life trying to keep the world from falling apart inside.
Every Thursday at 10:00, his order would arrive. Always the same, as if it were written in stone:
Sliced bread, a can of tomato soup, and a bag of joint supplements for your Golden Retriever.
The dog’s name was Toby. He had a gray muzzle, stiff hips, but kind, alert eyes. When he walked toward the door, you could hear his nails on the floor, slowly, with effort… and yet he wagged his tail, as if to say: “We’re still here.”
Doña Carmen was over eighty years old. Small, upright, and proud. One of those women who prefer to make ends meet rather than be pitied. She never left a tip on the app. Never. Instead, she would wait for me behind the door and put two euros in my hand, always the exact amount, always clean.
—Stop the gas. And drive carefully.
It wasn’t charity. It was a transaction between equals. She didn’t want to feel like a burden, and I didn’t want to feel like a hero. I was the delivery guy. She was the customer. Period.
Until November arrived.
That cold that seeps into your bones… and into your accounts too. I was working longer hours, making more deliveries, and yet it still seemed like I was always one step behind.
That Thursday my phone vibrated. I looked at the list and my stomach went empty.
1 bag of joint feed.
No bread. No soup.
I picked him up and went to his house. The air smelled of wet asphalt. When Doña Carmen opened the door, I felt another kind of cold: the kind that stays inside when the heating is turned on only a little.
She was wearing a wool coat… inside the house. Collar turned up. Her hands were a little red. And she looked thinner, as if winter had already begun to take its toll.
He gave me the two euros. His hand was trembling a little, but his chin was still up.
“Just the feed today, Doña Carmen?” I asked, trying to sound normal.
“I’m not hungry this week,” she said curtly, almost offended. And then, a second later, “Toby has to eat.”
In the entryway, on a small table, was a pillbox. Empty. Next to it, a piece of paper with numbers and dates. I pretended not to see it. But my mind did what it does when something hurts too much: it started adding things up.
Food. Warmth. Medicine. Dog.
And when you can’t afford everything, you choose love.
I went back to the car, started it… and stayed put for a moment. Not because I had time. Because I understood that if I tried to help her directly, she would close the door on me. Her independence was her last wall.
So I did the only thing that could work with someone like her.
Invented an “error”.
The following Thursday I stopped by the supermarket before the hike. I picked up his bag of feed. And with my money—the money I needed for my car—I added some simple things: eggs, milk, potatoes, apples, some vegetables, a roast chicken. And a hot water bottle.
I paid for everything normally. No tricks. No weird stories. Just me, my card, and a lump in my throat.
When I arrived, I placed the bags in his hand. He noticed the weight, looked inside, and his face hardened.
—I didn’t order this. You’ve made a mistake. Take it away.
I put on my best tired and hurried delivery man face.
“I can’t. The system’s messing things up these days. If I take it, they’ll ask me to throw it away later. And I hate throwing food away. If you keep it, you’ll be doing me a favor.”
He crossed his arms.
—I’m not going to pay anything.
“You don’t have to pay anything.” I shrugged and looked at my phone as if I had ten more stops. “It’s just… so it doesn’t go to waste.”
Doña Carmen looked at the chicken. Then at Toby, behind her legs, wagging his tail slowly. Then at me.
For a second I saw the struggle in his eyes: pride versus hunger.
But my lie gave me a dignified way out: I wasn’t accepting help; I was avoiding a waste. I was “fixing” a problem.
She sighed, as if angry with the world.
“What a mess…” she muttered, and picked up the bags.
And so our rhythm began.
Every Thursday the “mistake” became a little more generous. Sometimes fruit. Sometimes a piece of cheese. Sometimes oatmeal. Once, some vitamins. Another time, a blanket, because I saw her rubbing her hands together like someone lighting matches.
She grumbled about the app and “these automated things.” And I grumbled along with her. It was our secret language, a way of talking about what was important without naming it.
The other day I was working more so I could pay my Thursdays. My car was starting to sound strange, but I kept putting it off. Because the noise of my car seemed less urgent than her coat inside the house.
Six months.
And on a Thursday… nothing.
Without notice. Without order.
I waited. I refreshed the screen. I looked at the clock. And in the end, I was the same.
There was a small key box on the door. And in the garden, a sign: FOR SALE.
Something inside me froze.
The neighbor was outside. I asked him. He hesitated, as if he were gauging whether I had the right to be sad.
“She passed away three days ago,” she finally said. “In her sleep. Peacefully. Her son came and arranged everything. He took the dog.”
I went home with a hollow feeling in my chest. He wasn’t family. He wasn’t a friend. He was just the delivery man who rang the doorbell.
The next day I received a letter. Thick envelope. Official appearance. Sender: a law firm.
Inside there was a note.
For the distributor of the “ruling”,
My mother, Doña Carmen, left instructions to find him. I didn’t know his last name, but she described his car and the time he would arrive. She wanted him to receive this.
There was money in the envelope. Almost two thousand euros.
And underneath, crumpled papers, carefully smoothed out.
Tickets.
Mis tickets.
All the ones I had hidden, thinking they wouldn’t be noticed. She had found them. Kept them. One by one.
On top, a sheet of paper with his shaky but clear handwriting.
Young,
I’m old, not stupid.
I know a roast chicken doesn’t cost zero euros. And I know that a “fail” doesn’t last for months by doing the same thing.
I saw the tickets. Soon. And I kept them because I wanted to be sure.
I wasn’t wrong.
You didn’t humiliate me. You didn’t make me feel like a problem. You gave me an excuse I could accept without shame. You spared me my dignity.
My husband was like that: quiet, proper, doing what needs to be done when no one is looking.
Take this money. Fix your car. And know this: you made my last winter warm.
—Carmen
I sat in the kitchen with that letter and those tickets in my hands, and in the end my voice broke.
They keep telling us we’re alone. That we’re customers, delivery drivers, numbers. But sometimes the deepest bonds are born in the small gaps: between a half-open door, two euros “for gas,” and a lie gentle enough to salvage some dignity.
And sometimes, the nicest thing you can do for someone isn’t just to lend a hand.
It’s about doing it in a way that allows her to grab it… without lowering her head.
I thought the story ended the day I read Doña Carmen’s letter and saw my tickets stored away as if they were evidence of a tender crime. I was wrong: the real ending came a Thursday later, when her dog recognized me before I recognized myself.
I didn’t sleep that night. I stayed in the kitchen with the open envelope, the money on one side and her handwriting on the other, like two different weights on the same chest.
The clock struck three, then four, and I kept reading the same sentence over and over: “You made my last winter warm.” It was beautiful, and it was unbearable.
At dawn, I washed my face with cold water. I looked in the mirror and saw the same dark circles under my eyes as always, but with something more: a pure guilt, the kind that doesn’t let you lie to yourself.
I took the money out of the envelope. I counted it without meaning to, out of reflex, and I felt embarrassed at the second “thousand”.
I put it away again, slowly, as if the paper might tear from being squeezed so tightly.
That day I took the car to the village garage. It wasn’t a modern garage, one of those with white lights and free coffee; it was a place with black hands, an old calendar, and a dog sleeping in a corner.
The mechanic listened to the engine and shook his head.
—She put up with you out of affection, kid.
I laughed, but I broke inside, because I too had been putting up with it for months out of affection.
I paid for the repair, and when they gave me the keys, I felt something I hadn’t expected: relief. Not for myself. For her.
As if, in some way, obeying his last request was a way of returning the gesture without questioning his dignity, not even now.
Even so, the rest of the money felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket. It wasn’t mine, I kept telling myself. And at the same time, it was exactly what she had wanted.
That back-and-forth lasted two days. Until I did the only sensible thing: I went to see the house.
The gate no longer creaked. Someone had oiled it or replaced it. The mailbox was still crooked, but it seemed sadder than before, like a frozen gesture.
The FOR SALE sign was still in the garden, nailed down with two staples that were too shiny.
I stayed there for a while, without ringing the doorbell, because there was no doorbell to ring. And because the silence of an empty house has a strange volume, as if it were speaking to you without words.
Finally I ran into the neighbor, the same one who told me everything in the street.
“Are you the delivery man?” he asked, and in his voice there was no longer any doubt, only a kind of respect.
I nodded.
“The son came by again yesterday,” she said. “He’s at his mother’s apartment, packing things up. If you want… I can tell him you’re here.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t even know what I wanted. Excuse me? An explanation? To close something I didn’t know how to close?
—Just… tell him it was Álvaro. That he arrived on Thursdays at ten.
The neighbor looked at me the way you look at someone who has worked outdoors.
—I’m telling you.
I went back to the car and waited. I felt ridiculous, sitting like a teenager before an exam, staring at the steering wheel as if it could give me an answer.
The phone rang half an hour later. Unknown number.
I answered with a racing heart.
—Álvaro? —said a man’s voice, tired, a little broken—. I’m Miguel… Doña Carmen’s son.
I was breathless for a second. It was as if, by saying “son,” everything else fell into place in my head.
—Yes. It’s me.
There was a short silence, one of those heavy silences. Then he spoke through a tight throat.
—My mother left… a lot of notes. Some made me laugh. Others left me speechless.
I cleared my throat.
—I didn’t mean to…
“I know,” she interrupted, gently. “That’s precisely why I’m calling. Could you… come here for a moment? I’m at home.”
I walked to the door, even though I had parked nearby. I needed my body to arrive slowly so my head wouldn’t explode.
Miguel opened the door before I knocked. He was probably in his forties, with stubble and puffy eyes from lack of sleep. He was wearing a nice jacket, but it was wrinkled, as if he hadn’t had time to be “himself” since everything happened.
—Thank you for coming —he said.
I went inside. It smelled the same as always: soap, wood, something like old soup. And underneath, a new smell: cardboard boxes.
In the living room there were bags, albums, folded clothes. And in one corner, an old blanket that I recognized, the one that “the system” had mistakenly put there one day.
Miguel pointed to a chair for me.
—Please sit down.
I sat with my hands clasped together, like a child in front of the principal.
“I didn’t know your last name,” he said, “but my mother spoke of you as if you were… as if you were one of the family.”
My throat tightened.
—I was just bringing things.
Miguel smiled very little.
—No. You were doing something more difficult. You were allowing her to continue being herself.
I stared at the ground, because when someone tells you such a clear truth, the first thing you do is look down.
He took a piece of paper from his pocket. It was one of his mother’s notes, folded in four.
“He asked me to thank him without making a fuss,” she said. “And to give him the money ‘so the boy doesn’t end up stranded in a ditch.'”
I swallowed again.
—It’s not necessary… Really. I didn’t do it because…
“I know,” he repeated. “And yet, she wanted me to have it. It was her way of… balancing the world. My mother was like that.”
The silence between us was filled with Doña Carmen, without needing to name her again.
Then Miguel rubbed his face with his hand, as if trying to erase his tiredness.
—There’s something else.
He looked me in the eyes, for the first time ever.
—Toby is not well.
The dog’s name hit me like a familiar sound on an unfamiliar street.
—What’s wrong with him?
Miguel sighed.
—He eats, but little. He walks, but without enthusiasm. At night he stares at the door. And when he hears a motorcycle or a car, he gets up as if someone were about to arrive.
I felt a twinge in my chest. I imagined those fingernails on the floor, slowly searching for a doorbell that was no longer ringing.
—It’s… sad.
“He’s all alone,” Miguel corrected. “And I… I live far away. I work. I have children. They don’t want an old dog at home. I’ve tried to take him home these past few days, but…” He let out a bitter laugh, “it seems I’m the one in the way.”
I didn’t know what to say. Because I understood what he was saying without saying it: that the dog, just like his mother, had his pride and his habits.
Miguel looked around, at the boxes, at the house that was no longer a house.
—My mother left something else written down—she said. —She said that if Toby ever lost her… “the Thursday boy should have her.” That’s what she wrote.
I was frozen.
—That’s not…
Miguel raised a hand, asking for calm.
“It’s not an obligation. I don’t want to burden her with anything. I just… had to tell her, because she made it clear. And because Toby… Toby has already chosen her.”
I noticed my eyes were getting wet, and it made me angry. Not out of sadness, but because of that feeling that life sometimes gives you something beautiful and you don’t know what to do with it.
“Can I see it?” I asked.
Miguel nodded.
“He’s in the car. I didn’t want to leave him alone in a hotel. He’s scared.”
We went outside. The air was cold, but it wasn’t the cold of November anymore: it was a cold that was beginning to give way. As if winter were exhausted from squeezing so hard.
Miguel opened the back door of the car. I only saw a golden shadow, a gray snout, and those kind eyes.
Toby stood still for a second. Then he sniffed the air, and his body did something that broke my heart: he struggled to his feet, as if everything hurt… but still.
And he came towards me.
He didn’t run. He couldn’t. He walked quickly in his own way, his hips stiff, his nails clicking on the asphalt. And when he arrived, he nudged my leg with his snout, hard, insistent, as if to say: “You’re taking your time.”
“Hey, champ,” I whispered.
I bent down and stroked the back of his ear. He let out a small, relieved moan and rested his head on my knee as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Miguel stared at the scene, and I saw his face soften.
“See?” he said. “He doesn’t do that to me.”
I couldn’t answer him without my voice breaking.
“I… I don’t have much,” I finally said, almost apologetically. “I work long hours. I live in a small apartment. And he’s older.”
Miguel looked at me with a calm seriousness.
—My mother was also elderly. And you made her better off than many young people.
That left me speechless.
We stayed there for a while, the three of us, as if time had decided to be kind for the first time in weeks.
Then Miguel cleared his throat.
—Look… I don’t want to take Toby somewhere where he’s treated well “in theory” but where nobody knows his name. He doesn’t need a place. He needs… a Thursday.
I looked at the dog. Toby looked at me the way you look at someone who has already made up their mind.
And at that moment I understood one simple thing: Doña Carmen wasn’t asking me to return anything. She was letting me continue.
“I’ll keep it,” I said.
Miguel exhaled, as if he had been holding his breath since the funeral.
-Thank you.
—Don’t thank me—I replied.—She already thanked me.
That same afternoon, Miguel went upstairs and came back down with a box. Inside were Toby’s bowl, a worn-out leash, a blanket, and a small package with Doña Carmen’s handwriting.
“He left this prepared,” he said.
I opened the little package at home later, when Toby was already lying in my living room as if it had always been his.
It was an old leather collar with a simple tag. It didn’t say anything heroic. Just: TOBY. And a phone number crossed out with a pen, as if it were no longer useful.
There was a tiny note underneath.
“So that it doesn’t get lost. And so that you don’t forget.”
I cried silently. Toby raised his head, looked at me for a moment, and then laid his snout back down, confident, as if to say, “That’s it.”
Weeks passed. The car sounded better. So did I, in a way.
Toby had good days and bad days. There were mornings when he got up slowly and others when he seemed to remember that he was still a dog.
I kept delivering. I was still just a tiny dot on a map to a lot of people. But I didn’t care anymore, because I knew that sometimes, behind an order, there’s a whole life trying not to fall apart inside.
One Thursday, at ten o’clock, I woke up alone because Toby got up earlier. He went to the door slowly and stood there, waiting.
I stood still, my heart sinking. Because I understood that he, too, had his ritual, his secret clock.
I grabbed the leash.
—Okay, mate. Let’s go.
We left. We didn’t go to Doña Carmen’s house, because it wasn’t her house anymore. But we walked to the street, to the bench where she used to sit in the summer, as she had once told me, without really wanting to tell me.
I sat down with Toby beside me. The sun was small, shy, but it was there.
I took two euros out of my pocket. The same ones as always. I had kept them from that last day, without knowing why, like a lucky charm.
I looked at them for a second. Then I left them on the floor, next to the leg of the bench, like someone paying a symbolic debt to the world.
Not to buy anything. Not to put on a show. Just to close the circle with the same gesture with which it all began.
Toby rested his snout on my thigh. I stroked his head, and for a moment I felt that Doña Carmen was there, upright, proud, glancing sideways to make sure no one was humiliating themselves.
“Relax,” I murmured. “Nobody bows their head here.”
Toby sighed. The air smelled of real bread, of a damp street, and of spring arriving late.
And I understood, at last, that my lie hadn’t been a stain. It had been a bridge.
A bridge between two strangers who needed the same thing and didn’t know how to ask for it: a little warmth, without shame.
That Thursday, for the first time in months, I truly smiled. And Toby, as if he’d been waiting for it since November, wagged his tail slowly, his whole body saying:
“We’re still here.”
