Chapter 5
PART 5:
That night, the pain started.
A deep pulling ache low in her back and through her hips.
She called the doctor’s office.
The nurse told her to rest, hydrate, and have someone bring her in if the pain got worse.
Mariana did not call Doña Carmen.
She called Julian.
He did not answer.
He was in a meeting.
So she lay down alone, one hand on her belly, whispering to her daughter.
“We’re okay. We’re okay.”
But the next morning, Doña Carmen used her key.
She came in without knocking.
Mariana was in bed, exhausted from a sleepless night, when the door opened.
Doña Carmen stood there with Julian on the phone.
“She won’t get up,” she said.
Mariana pushed herself onto one elbow.
“Get out of my bedroom.”
Doña Carmen held the phone out.
“Tell him why you’re hiding under the covers.”
Julian’s voice came through the speaker.
“Mariana?”
She heard confusion.
Fear.
And still, beneath both, doubt.
That hurt the most.
“I’m in pain,” she said. “I called the doctor.”
Doña Carmen laughed sharply.
“She is lying. She has marks on her legs and refuses to show anyone.”
Mariana went still.
The marks were from the night before.
Doña Carmen had come over after the phone call and blocked Mariana at the top of the stairs when she tried to leave for the hospital herself.
The older woman had grabbed her by both legs when Mariana slipped down onto the landing.
Not to help her.
But to stop her from reaching the front door.
“You are not going to run to a doctor and make my son look like a fool,” Doña Carmen had hissed.
Mariana had kicked free and crawled back into the bedroom, locking the door until morning.
Now Doña Carmen was using the bruises she caused as evidence of betrayal.
“Show him,” Doña Carmen demanded.
Mariana shook her head.
“No.”
Julian hung up and drove straight home.
By the time he arrived, Doña Carmen had staged the room like a trial.
She stood near the bed.
Mariana lay under the blanket, shaking.
Julian entered, pale and confused.
His mother did not wait.
“Show him what you’re hiding.”
Then she ripped the blanket away.
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And Julian saw the truth written on his wife’s skin.
👉 But when the doctor said Mariana needed the hospital immediately, Doña Carmen tried to escape the room she had turned into a lie…
