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

“I don’t know if it can be proved, Ana.

“He drugged me.

The word came out quietly, but it filled the entire apartment.

Matías moved a little. Carla rocked him instinctively, even though she had just met him. That gesture broke me more than any paper.

“There’s something else,” he said.

“No.

—Ana…

“I can’t.

But she had already taken out the last sheet.

It was proof of a large transfer to an account in a doctor’s name. Then another receipt, from an address I didn’t recognize. Then a handwritten note with three words:

“Resolve viability first.”

It made me cold.

“What does it mean?”

Carla didn’t answer right away.

I understood it alone.

I bent over on the table and vomited pure air.

Marcos not only knew that Matías came with Down syndrome. He had not only abandoned me after finding out. He had tried to erase my son before he could be born.

Carla left Matías in the crib and held my hair, as if the betrayal had turned the world upside down and now she was my sister.

“I found it all last night,” he said. “I haven’t slept. I went to the hotel where he stayed. I put the papers in front of him.” First he denied. Then he said you wanted money. Then he said the baby was going to ruin everyone’s lives.

I wiped my mouth with a napkin.

“Did you say that?”

Carla swallowed.

“He said that a child like that was not fair to anyone.

I looked at Matías.

My son was breathing slowly. His eyelashes were wet from sleep, his fingers were small, his black hair stuck to his forehead. It wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t a burden. It wasn’t a genetic error on paper.

It was my baby.

And Marcos had looked at him since before he was born as if he were garbage that had to disappear.

“I’m going to kill him,” I whispered.

Carla took my hand.

“No. We’re going to sink it.

That was the first time he said “let’s go”.

Not “you.”

Not “I.”

Let’s go.

I sat in front of her while my apartment smelled of milk, diapers and fear. Carla began to arrange everything on the table as if she were putting together a puzzle of horror.

I had screenshots of messages from Marcos with a number saved as “Dr. R.” I had pictures of me taken from afar, leaving the clinic, buying fruit, entering my building. I had receipts for deposits that he never sent me, because they were not for me. They were to pay someone to watch me.

“There are also messages with your mother,” Carla said.

I felt another twinge.

“Did your mother know?”

Carla looked at me with pity.

“More than me.

He showed me the printed chat.

Doña Elvira: “Have you found out about the child?”

Mark: “Yes. It’s bad.”

Doña Elvira: “Then you can’t recognize him. Carla should not carry that shame.”

Mark: “I’m looking at options.”

Doña Elvira: “You give that girl money and it’s over.”

That girl.

Me.

The one who cried at night hugging yellow clothes.

The one who spoke to Matías from the belly.

The one who prayed in silence not so that her son would be “normal”, but to have the strength to love him without fear.

“Shouldn’t Carla carry that shame?” I repeated.

Carla looked down.

“My mother-in-law has been telling me for years that a woman without children is useless. And now it turns out that her son’s child does exist, but since he was born different, he is no good either.

His voice broke in the last word.

I thought I would hate her.

I thought that when I had her in front of me I would feel like yelling at her, spitting at her that her perfect life had crushed mine. But Carla didn’t have the face of an enemy. She had the face of a woman whose floor had also been stolen.

“Your children?” I asked.