When she got sick and passed away, something inside me died too—and it never came back.
I stopped opening my mail.
For months, unopened envelopes piled up in the drawer by the front door. Bills. Advertisements. Letters from that same fertility clinic that I couldn’t even bring myself to look at.
Why would I?
There was nothing left to plan.
My mother-in-law, Doña Amparo, on the other hand, had been acting strangely.
She was busy.
Happy.
Smiling.
I foolishly assumed she’d finally forgiven me for not giving her more grandchildren.
How naive I was.
I stood in the doorway and asked what she was doing.
She didn’t even flinch.
She calmly told me the house needed happiness again—that we couldn’t keep living with a mausoleum forever.
A mausoleum.
That’s what she called my daughter’s bedroom.
I reminded her, as calmly as I could, that the house belonged to me.
I had bought it before I got married.
She knew that.
For the first time, I saw uncertainty cross her face.
But she still didn’t leave.
“How long have you known about this?” I asked.
She lowered her voice.
“Mayra came to see me. She was scared.”
Mayra.
Rodrigo’s new coworker at the high school—the one who laughed the loudest at every Christmas party.
“Scared of what?”
“That you’d find out the wrong way,” she answered. “She’s only trying to help.”
Help.
That single word caught in my throat.
She didn’t say, “She’s pregnant with Rodrigo’s baby.”
She simply said she was helping.
I pulled out my phone, turned on the speaker, and called Rodrigo while staring straight into her eyes.
One ring.
Two. PART 2 NEXT
