Sergio Barragán was not just anyone. He was the moneylender Arturo had secretly borrowed money from the previous year to save my brother-in-law Óscar’s failed business, Teresa’s favorite son. A loan I had never approved. A loan that, according to Arturo, had already been paid.
He had lied to me.
—Óscar lost everything gambling —he continued—. I had to help him. My mother begged me. I signed. Then I couldn’t get out.
I felt my heart shift out of place.
They had not only deceived me.
They had used me.
—Daniela told me that if the house was put in my name before you found out about the debt, Barragán would give us time —said Arturo—. But your father left it protected for you. Only… only if you were gone…
He didn’t finish the sentence.
He didn’t need to.
I was the obstacle.
I was the extra signature.
Then the door to the room suddenly burst open. Teresa, my mother-in-law, came in with her hair disheveled and her eyes blazing.
She saw both of us.
She saw Don Rafael behind me.
And the first thing she screamed was not “Are you alive?” or “What happened?”
It was something much worse.
—You weren’t supposed to drink it, you idiot!
And in that instant, I knew that the worst betrayal of my life had not yet shown its whole face.
PART 3
The entire room went silent after Teresa’s scream.
Even the machines seemed to lower their volume.
My mother-in-law covered her mouth too late. Arturo closed his eyes with a grimace of defeat. Don Rafael took a step forward, calm, as if he had been waiting for that sentence ever since he saw the bottle in my kitchen.
—Repeat that —he said.
Teresa stepped back.
—I didn’t mean…
—Of course you did —I interrupted her, and for the first time, my voice did not tremble—. That’s exactly what you meant.
The woman who, for fifteen years, had called me “daughter” in front of people and “that woman” behind my back, the woman who had held my children when they were babies and brought me broth when I had surgery, looked at me as if I were the one to blame for still being alive.
And then she spoke.
Not out of remorse. Out of rage.
