Chương 6
Mariana watched the pen move. Unlike Judge Rivas’s, it did not tremble.
The independent DNA test took place that afternoon at a laboratory chosen jointly by Sofía and Catalina’s counsel. Catalina waited in a separate room. The samples were sealed in front of witnesses.
When it was over, Mariana found Catalina standing beside a vending machine, staring at rows of crackers as though they presented a hostile negotiation.
“You don’t have to stay,” Mariana said.
Catalina turned. “I thought you might want to ask something.”
“I don’t.”
“All right.”
Catalina pressed a button. The machine took her money and failed to release the crackers.
She pressed it again.
“It won’t help,” Mariana said.
“I know.”
Catalina pressed it a third time.
Mariana stared at her. “You are a billionaire.”
“That is not relevant to this machine.”
For one unexpected second, Mariana heard Rosa’s laugh in her own throat.
Catalina looked at her, startled by the sound.
The moment passed too quickly to become comfort.
Mariana’s gaze dropped to the ring. “Was that yours when I was born?”
Catalina touched it. “It belonged to my grandmother. She gave it to me when I turned eighteen.”
“Why did Rosa recognize you?”
Catalina’s face changed. “You think she did?”
“She used to turn newspapers over when your picture was in them.”
“Did she ever say my name?”
“No.”
“Did she keep anything from the hospital?”
“A blue tin. Héctor took it.”
Catalina became very still. “He knew it mattered.”
“He said he didn’t know what I meant.”
“He lied.”
Mariana’s temper rose. “You don’t get to sound surprised by that. You arrived with a file proving it.”
Catalina looked away.
People moved through the laboratory corridor carrying forms, coats, children, cups of coffee. A cleaner pushed a cart around them and apologized even though they were the ones blocking the way.
Catalina stepped aside.
“I spent years imagining the person who had taken you,” she said. “I made that person cruel because it was easier than imagining someone ordinary. An ordinary person could disappear. A monster could be hunted.”
“Rosa was not ordinary to me.”
“No.”
“She was afraid of hospitals. She counted change twice. She sang badly and loudly when she cleaned. She could hold a grudge over a borrowed casserole dish for ten years.”
Catalina listened.
“She also lied about where I came from,” Mariana said.
The admission left a hollow place behind it.
Catalina did not fill the silence.
The laboratory results arrived two days later.
Sofía read them first. Then she turned the paper across the table in her office.
The probability of a biological mother-daughter relationship exceeded 99.99 percent.
Mariana focused on the decimal points. They seemed obscene in their certainty.
“Do you want Catalina here?” Sofía asked.
“No.”
“Do you want me to call anyone?”
“No.”
“What do you need?”
“I need everyone to stop asking me what I need.”
Sofía leaned back.
After a moment, she said, “I need coffee.”
Mariana looked at her.
“My next appointment is in twenty minutes, and if I do not get coffee, I will become legally incompetent. You may sit here, leave, cry, swear, or read the same page until it changes. I will be downstairs.”
She left.
Mariana sat alone with the report.
Her phone vibrated repeatedly. Reporters. Unknown numbers. A cousin of Héctor’s she had met twice. Her supervisor from the hotel. Catalina did not call.
That restraint eventually became its own kind of pressure.
Mariana opened their message thread and typed: It is confirmed.
Catalina replied after almost a minute.
Yes.
Nothing else.
Mariana wrote: Did you know my father?
This time the answer took longer.
Yes. His name was Esteban Aranda. He died twelve years ago.
Was he looking for me?
He looked for two years. Then he stopped believing you were alive.
And you?
I stopped believing many times. I continued anyway.
Mariana placed the phone down.
That evening, Héctor came to Camila’s building.
He did not enter. The doorman called upstairs to say Señor Luján was in the lobby with flowers and a suitcase containing Mariana’s clothes.
Camila looked through the peephole as though she might see seven floors down.
“Flowers,” she said. “A classic tool of innocent men.”
Sofía advised Mariana not to meet him alone. Ten minutes later, she arrived with a junior attorney and arranged for them to use the building’s small residents’ lounge. Camila sat outside the door.
Héctor looked tired. His beard was still trimmed, his gray suit still immaculate, but the skin beneath his eyes had darkened. He placed the flowers on a side table and the suitcase near Mariana’s chair.
“I brought what I could find.”
“My documents?”
“I don’t have them.”
“My mother’s tin?”
“No.”
“The laptop?”
“Company property.”
“It was our personal computer.”
“It contained company records.”
Sofía lifted one finger. “Do not argue about ownership here. We have a pending request.”
Héctor looked at her. “And you are?”
“Someone who bills by the interruption.”
His mouth tightened.
Mariana folded her hands over her belly. “When did you see the DNA email?”
“I told you. I don’t remember.”
“You accessed it on April fourth at two thirteen in the morning.”
For the first time, he looked at Sofía rather than Mariana.
Sofía said nothing. They had recovered the timestamp from the service provider that morning.
Héctor loosened his tie. “I could not sleep.”
“You read it.”
“Yes.”
“You deleted it.”
“I panicked.”
“You contacted a civil registry employee two days later.”
“I contacted someone who could tell me whether the records were real.”
“Why not tell me?”
“Because you would have done exactly what you are doing now.”
“What am I doing now?”
“Letting Catalina turn your life into a public claim.”
Mariana stared at him. “You filed for divorce before I knew.”
“Our marriage was already failing.”
“You asked me to sign refinancing papers the next week.”
“The company needed liquidity.”
May you like
“My signature is on companies I have never heard of.”
“I will explain every document.”
