“Don’t,” I said quietly.
“Miguel, I don’t know what she’s been telling people, but Valeria was—”
“The doctor found marks on her wrists, Mamá.”
Brenda’s head snapped up from her phone.
The silence that followed was not the silence of innocence. It was the silence of calculation — the brief, terrible pause of people deciding which lie fits best.
“She must have done that herself,” my mother said finally, her voice hardening. “You know how dramatic she is. You know she does things for attention. She never liked sharing you with us, Miguel. From the very beginning she has been trying to take you away from your family—”
“Stop.”
The word came out of me with a weight I’d never used before. A heaviness that surprised even me.
“If your wife dies, at least she won’t keep you away from your real family anymore.”
That’s what my mother said next. Not quietly. Not to me. She said it to Dr. Fuentes, who had walked in to update me on Valeria’s condition.
