I sat in a plastic chair with Santiago sleeping against my chest — finally cool, finally fed, his tiny fist curled around my thumb — and I answered every question the officer asked me. I told them about the cold apartment. The unmoved diapers. The locked phone. The bruises shaped like hands.
I told them about the four days my wife spent alone in a room, thirty-six hours postpartum, being told by my mother that I was never coming back.
The officer wrote it all down without expression. Then he looked at me and said, very quietly:
“You did the right thing.”
I nodded. But all I could think was — I should have done it sooner. I should have seen it sooner. The small cruelties disguised as concern. The way my mother always knew exactly where to place the knife. The way Brenda laughed when she shouldn’t have.
I thought of every family dinner where Valeria sat quietly. Every holiday where I made her apologize for things she hadn’t done. Every time I told her she was being sensitive, that my family meant well, that she just needed to try harder.
She had been surviving my family for years. And I had handed her to them alone.
When I was finally allowed back into Valeria’s room, she was awake. Pale. IV in her arm. She turned her head when she heard me come in.
She didn’t say anything at first.
Neither did I.
