I ruffled their hair, feeling so present it almost hurt. “We’ll use every color. That’s a promise.”
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Michael about the delayed child support. I stared at it, thumb hovering, but then looked at the girls tangled at my side.
He’d made his choice a long time ago. We were done waiting for him.
“That’s a promise.”
These moments were ours now.
I wound the camera and grinned. “Alright, who wants to race to the swings?”
Sneakers pounded and laughter spilled out, mine mixed with theirs as we ran.
No one could give me back the years I lost.
But from here on out, every memory was mine to make. And no one would ever steal another day.
“How beautiful your husband looks when he sleeps after betraying you.”
That was the message I received at 3:07 a.m.
My cell phone vibrated over the bureau, in the main chamber of a huge house in Lomas de Chapultepec, a house so quiet that even the lie was breathing short. I opened my eyes before I touched the phone. I don’t know why. Maybe because a wife learns to wake up before misfortune walks through the door.
The photo came from an unknown number, but I didn’t need to ask who it was.
Valeria.
My husband’s personal assistant.
The same one he presented at a business dinner in Polanco as “the most loyal person in the office.” The same one who laughed too much of his jokes, who accommodated his tie in front of me, who looked at me as if he was already measuring the curtains of my house.
I opened the picture.
There she was, lying in a suite of the Four Seasons of Reforma, wrapped in my husband’s white shirt like a victory flag. Behind, half asleep between scrambled sheets, was Rodrigo Santillan.
My husband.
Managing Director of Santillan Logistics Group.
The man I had left my last name for in the background. The man I helped raise a company that now moved merchandise through ports, airports and borders across Mexico.
Valeria smiled in the picture.
Not like a nervous lover.
I smiled like someone who had already won.
I waited to feel anger. Pain. Shame. Something.
But the only thing that came out of me was a dry, short laugh, so cold that I didn’t even recognize it myself.
Poor Valeria.
He thought I was just “the wife of Rodrigo.”
I did not know that before being his wife, I had been Mariana Torres, daughter of a broken Veracruz carrier, fierce accountant, invisible negotiator and the only reason why Santillán Grupo Logístico had not sunk three times in the last five years.
I didn’t answer.
I didn’t call Rodrigo.
I didn’t cry.
