She snatched the microphone from the DJ. “I’m expecting Fernando’s child,” she said. And she smiled. She smiled at me.
My mom dropped her wine glass. The glass shattered against the marble. My dad gripped the table as if the floor were moving.
I didn't move. I didn't scream, I didn't cry. Because at the back table there was a man in a gray suit whom Jimena didn't know. And I had been waiting for this exact moment for four months.
I am thirty-eight years old. I was a soldier, now retired, and there are some things you never forget: the main one is that you don't face anything without having all the bullets.
I organized that party myself. I chose the venue, the mariachi band, the three-tiered cake. I even had the napkins embroidered with our initials. Ten years with Fernando. Ten. That morning I ironed his favorite blue shirt myself.
Jimena is my younger sister. The one I carried as a baby, the one I bailed out of debts even my parents didn't know about. She arrived at the party in a red dress, hugged me tightly, and whispered in my ear, "I love you so much, sister."
It smelled like Fernando's perfume.
At the time, I didn't put two and two together. But two months earlier, Fernando had arrived home smelling of that same perfume, and when I asked him about it, he said it was the car's new air freshener.
I believed him. Of course I believed him.
Hiring the investigator wasn't because of Jimena. It was because of Fernando. It started with emergency meetings on Saturdays. A trip to Cuernavaca "with the guys from work." On February 14th, he went out to buy me flowers and came back three hours later empty-handed.
I didn't complain. Instead, I spoke to Héctor Mendoza, an investigator. "I want to know who it's with," I told him. "That's all."
Two weeks later he called me. He asked me to sit down. I told him I was already sitting down.
"Madam," he told me, "the woman is from your own family."
I thought about a cousin. I thought about a sister-in-law. Never, not even as a joke, did I think about my sister.
Until I opened the first photo. Fernando and Jimena leaving a hotel in Roma. She was wearing the blouse I had given her for her birthday.
That night I realized I'd been sleeping next to a stranger for years. And eating at the same table as someone else.
I kept that photo to myself for four months. For four months I smiled at Christmas dinner while Jimena sat next to me carving the turkey. For four months I said "yes, everything's fine" every time someone asked about Fernando.
And there he was now, microphone in hand, announcing to the entire room what I had known for four months.
Everyone was looking at me. They were waiting for me to break down. To cry, to run away from my own party.
I stood up slowly. I smoothed down my black dress. And I walked towards her.
—Get off the microphone, Jimena.
"No, sister. People deserve to know the truth." Her lip trembled, but she kept smiling. "Fernando and I love each other. We're going to start a family. Something you could never give him."
The room let out a low "uuuh". I felt three hundred eyes fixed on my back.
"A family," I repeated.
"Just accept it. You lost." And she raised her voice so everyone could hear her: "This time I won."
I didn't answer her. I turned toward the table in the back and nodded to the man in the gray suit.
Hector stood up. He was carrying a thick, red folder under his arm. He walked to the front without greeting anyone, without smiling.
Jimena's smile began to fade.
"Who is that?" he asked.
I snatched the microphone out of his hand. He wouldn't let go.
—The man who has been keeping something for four months that even you don't know exists.
Hector placed the red folder on the cake table. He opened it. He took out a single sheet of paper, stamped with a laboratory logo, and handed it to me without saying a word.
I lifted it up so my sister could see it properly.
—Sister—I said, with a firm hand—, that baby is not Fernando's.
The color drained from his face.
—And the real father is sitting here, in this room. Three tables away from you:
Part 2.
"Three tables away from you," I repeated. "His name is Ricardo. Your coworker. The one you brought as a guest."
The room turned its head. A dark-haired man stood up abruptly and knocked over his chair. He didn't run. He stood there, pale, staring at Jimena. And Jimena saw him. Everything was in that look.
Fernando slumped into a chair, his face buried in his hands. Ten years of marriage, and in the end, not even the baby they ruined my life for was his.
I won. That's what I thought that night. I won.
But I got home and couldn't sleep.
Because something wouldn't let me. Jimena smiled at me for ten years while she slept with my husband. Ten years of "I love you, sister," right in my face.
And if he lied to me about this for ten years…
What else had he lied to me about?
That morning I took a Bimbo bag out of the bottom drawer.
Inside was a small blue yarn hat. I knitted it myself twelve years ago, when I was seven months pregnant.
Because I had a son. Nobody in this story knew that.
Twelve years ago I still hadn't met Fernando. I was in the army, and my baby's father, a soldier, was killed in an accident three months before the child was born.
I gave birth alone. In a small clinic, at night. I lost a lot of blood, I fainted. When I woke up, the only thing next to my bed was Jimena, holding my hand.
"She's gone, Sofi," he told me. "She didn't even get a chance to breathe."
I never saw him. Not even in death. “So you don’t keep that image in your mind,” she said, and she took care of everything. There was no wake. No grave. Only her word.
I believed her, because she was my sister, and because I was too broken to ask.
For twelve years I kept that little hat without even having a grave to mourn him at.
That night, for the first time, I didn't hold him to my face. I just stared at him. And I wondered why, in twelve years, they had never let me see my son.
I didn't tell anyone. They would have said I was crazy. That the scandal at the party wasn't enough, that now I was digging up dead bodies.
But I remembered one thing.
Jimena's "son," Diego, was born that same week. Just when she was supposedly going to give birth too. Twelve years later, Diego has my dad's eyes. And the same birthmark on his chin that I have.
One afternoon I went to my parents' house, where Diego stays on weekends. I grabbed his toothbrush from the bathroom. Some hairs. I put them in a small bag.
My hands were trembling in the lab. The woman asked me about our relationship. I didn't know what to say. I said, "Just curious."
Three weeks without sleep, waiting for an envelope.
When it arrived, I opened it standing in the kitchen. I read one line. Probability of motherhood: 99.99%.
I sat down on the floor. There, on the kitchen floor, with the paper in my hand.
My son did not die.
My son sat three chairs away from me at every dinner for twelve years. And he would call me "auntie".
The next day I went early. Diego was there.
He opened the door for me. Twelve years old, skinny, disheveled, wearing his usual Club América jersey.
—Aunt Sofi? What are you doing so early?
I couldn't get a word out. The only thing I could think of was something silly.
—Have you had breakfast yet?
He shook his head.
I went inside. I made him eggs and beans, just the way he likes them. He climbed onto the bench, tapping his phone, telling me about a video game. Just like the hundred times I made him breakfast without him knowing it was mine.
I watched him cut the egg with the fork and couldn't stand what was inside.
—Diego. Do you know that I used to carry you around a lot when you were a baby?
—My grandmother tells me. That you wouldn't let anyone else hold me. —She laughed with her mouth full—. That you used to sing me to sleep.
I had to turn around and wash a plate that was already clean.
—Auntie. Why are you crying?
I wasn't going to lie to him too.
—Because I love you very much, Diego. More than you can imagine.
He shrugged, like a child does, and continued eating.
I stayed there, watching him eat the breakfast I had made for him, twelve years late.
I couldn't call him "son." Not that morning. But deep down, I already knew no other way to call him.
That week I mustered up the courage and showed the paper to my parents.
My mom read it and dropped it on the table as if it were burning hot.
—Sofia. You're hurting. That makes you see things.
—Mom, it says ninety-nine percent.
"Those papers are wrong. Are you going to ruin Diego's life because of a fight with your sister?"
For more information, continue to the next page
