Public Shame
The next day, I opened the door to find my mother-in-law waiting for me, two black bags in hand. “Diego sent me,” she declared with a coolness that turned my stomach. She wasn’t here to comfort me; she was here to collect Diego’s things.
“How shameful, Laura,” she said, her eyes darting to my stomach, a look of disgust crossing her features. “Diego didn’t deserve this.”
“I didn’t cheat on him,” I replied, my voice barely above a whisper. The pitying smile she offered me felt like salt in an open wound. “They all say that.”
Within the week, the neighborhood gossip spread like wildfire. The whispers followed me everywhere. “The cheating wife,” they called me, the “shameless woman.” I became the woman who’d gotten pregnant after her husband’s vasectomy, the scandal eating away at my reputation. Meanwhile, Diego posted a photo of himself with Paola at a restaurant in Polanco, her arm draped around him as he wrote, “Sometimes life removes a lie to give you peace.”
I read that message sitting on the bathroom floor, another wave of nausea washing over me. Tears streamed down my face, mixing with the anxiety that twisted my stomach into knots.
A Bitter Meeting
Two weeks later, Diego asked to meet me at a café. I walked in, my heart pounding. The smell of coffee and sweet pastries hung thick in the air. He sat at a table with Paola beside him, a folder opened between them. My stomach dropped.
“I want a quick divorce,” he said, his tone cold. “And when the baby is born, a DNA test.”
Paola smiled, her hand resting on her flat stomach as if she had every right to be there. “It’s healthiest for everyone,” she chimed in, her voice dripping with false sweetness.
“For everyone, or for you?” I snapped, anger igniting a fire within me.
Diego slammed his fist on the table, rattling the utensils. “Stop acting like the victim. You destroyed this family.”
I opened the folder he had handed me. The papers inside were a grim reminder of the control he sought. Give up the house. Minimum alimony. Conditional custody. One clause made my blood run cold: if the baby wasn’t his, I had to repay him for “all marital expenses.”
“Marital expenses? Are you charging me for the years I washed your underwear too?” I laughed once, a sound broken and empty.
Paola turned red, but Diego clenched his jaw, his gaze hardening. “Sign it, Laura. Don’t make this more humiliating.”
“Humiliating was you leaving with your lover instead of coming with me to one appointment.”
I wouldn’t sign. I refused to be painted as the villain in Diego’s narrative.
