“They are still at the clinic. There’s confusion. Mauricio hasn’t said anything yet.”
I exhaled slowly, my fingers tightening around the phone without realizing it, as a faint image formed in my mind despite myself.
Mauricio standing there, surrounded by his family, their certainty beginning to fracture in small, almost invisible cracks.
Ximena’s smile fading, her confidence faltering, her words from earlier echoing back in a space that suddenly felt less solid.
I imagined the silence that must have followed the doctor’s words, heavier than any argument, harder to dismiss or twist into something convenient.
And for a brief moment, I felt something close to pity, but it slipped away almost as quickly as it appeared, leaving only distance again.
The driver slowed the car as we approached a traffic light, the red glow reflecting faintly across the dashboard and onto my hands.
Everything seemed to move more slowly now, as if time itself had stretched, giving me too much space to think and not enough to escape it.
My phone vibrated once more, and this time I didn’t hesitate before opening the message.
“They’re asking if you knew. Mauricio is insisting there must be a mistake.”
A small, almost bitter breath escaped me, not quite a laugh, not quite anything else, just a reaction that didn’t fully form.
Of course he would say that, I thought, clinging to the version of reality that had always been more comfortable for him.
For years, he had chosen what to believe based on what benefited him, not what was true, and nothing had forced him to change that before.
I leaned my head back slightly, closing my eyes for a second, letting the rhythm of the car fill the space where my thoughts had been racing.
There it was, the moment I had been moving toward without fully admitting it, the quiet edge of something irreversible.
If I stayed silent, everything would collapse on its ow
read more in next page
