My sisters, out of cruelty.
My mother, out of cowardice.
And me… because of abandonment.
That night they let me see Lucia for a few minutes.
She was lying down, with an IV in her arm and her skin whiter than the pillow.
Even so, when she saw me, she tried to smile.
I approached and kissed her forehead.
“Forgive me,” I said before he could speak.
She shook her head slowly.
—No, Diego…
—Yes. Don’t deny it. I failed you.
Her eyes filled with tears.
—I should have spoken up sooner too.
—No. You didn’t have to put up with any of this.
Lucia closed her eyes for a second.
When she opened them, I saw something new in her.
No fear.
Years of weariness.
“I tried to,” she whispered. “Several times. But every time I tried to tell you how they made me feel… you defended them without even realizing it. You said I was exaggerating. That that’s just how your family was. That they didn’t mean to hurt me.”
Each word fell on me like a stone.
Because it was true.
I had said so.
More than once.
Lucia took a deep breath.
—Last week I heard Isabel tell Patricia that she hoped the baby would be a boy, so that “at least all the sacrifice would be worth it.”
I remained motionless.
-That?
Lucia began to cry silently.
—And Carmen said that if I couldn’t handle a full house, I was even less likely to be a mother.
I felt such a dark hatred that my hands trembled.
They hadn’t just made her work.
They had been breaking her down from the inside.
Little by little.
Day after day.
And she had endured it alone.
I leaned forward and rested my forehead on his hand.
“It’s over,” I told him. “I swear. It’s all over.”
The next morning I didn’t go home to rest.
I went to close a chapter.
I found my sisters in the kitchen.
None of them had the nerve to pretend to be normal.
Isabel was the first to speak.
-How are you doing?
I didn’t answer that question.
