“He had the baby look into Down syndrome before you knew it,” Carla said.

The room became blurry.

Matías slept against his chest, oblivious, with his mouth open and a little hand closed on the blanket. I looked at the papers as if they were someone else’s.

“No,” I said. “The doctor told me at twenty weeks.

“Marcos knew it since twelve.

I felt like something was being ripped out of me.

Not the heart.

Something deeper.

The stupid idea that Marcos had simply been a coward. That he had been scared, disappeared, hidden like so many cowardly men. But no. He had had time. He had had information. He had had money to pay others to know about my son, while I vomited alone in the bathroom and spoke with a belly that I thought was protected by my ignorance.

“How?” I asked.

Carla opened another page.

It was a lab report. I didn’t understand all the terms, but I did see my name, my age, the weeks of pregnancy, and a line marked in red.

High risk of trisomy 21.

Below, a signature that was not mine.

Consent Received.

I got up so fast that I almost fell.

“I never signed that.

“I know.

“Nobody took my blood for that.

Carla pursed her lips.

“According to the receipts, it was in a clinic in Lomas. But look at the date.

I saw her.

That day I was with Marcos.

I remembered suddenly.

An expensive restaurant.

He insisted that we toast to “our future”. I told him that I couldn’t drink much because I felt weird. He laughed, asked me for an orange juice and then I felt dizzy.

I thought it was pregnancy.

I thought it was tiredness.

I believed so many things.

I put my hand to my mouth.

“He drugged me.

Carla closed her eyes.