Two years later, I became pregnant again. When we found out it was another girl, I begged Alejandro to keep it private for a while. I wanted to enjoy my pregnancy without Mercedes’s interference. But he insisted.
“She’s my mother. She has a right to know. She’ll get over it.”
She didn’t.
We went to his parents’ house one Sunday. When Alejandro shared the news, Mercedes dropped her cup. Her face twisted, not with joy, but disbelief.
“No… that’s not possible.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
She pointed at me.
“My son doesn’t make daughters. I ignored it once, but not twice. Those girls aren’t Arandas. You’re nothing but a liar.”
Alejandro exploded.
“Mom, stop! That’s my wife and my daughters!”
I grabbed Lucía, who began to cry, confused. Mercedes kept shouting—that I had stained their name, that Lucía didn’t belong, that the baby inside me proved my betrayal. Alejandro rushed us out and apologized the entire drive home. That’s when I finally told him everything she had said over the years. He hit the steering wheel in anger.
“She’s never coming near you again.”
For months, he kept that promise. We cut contact, avoided them, tried to move forward. But as my due date approached, Alejandro started to weaken. He said his father kept calling, that his mother cried every day, that maybe we should “be the bigger people.”
I agreed to one dinner—without Lucía—just to talk.
