Meanwhile, Doña Elena was outside the room demanding to come in and meet “her granddaughter.” Diego went out and said something I never thought I would hear:
—You are not my daughter’s grandmother. Not after what you did.
She screamed, cried, said she had done it all for Valeria. That no bride deserves to have a pregnant woman steal everyone’s attention. That she, as a mother, only wanted to protect the most important day of her daughter’s life.
Then Valeria opened the door.
She had her veil in her hand and eyes full of rage.
—Don’t you dare use me as an excuse —she said—. Marisol was there because I asked her to be. The only person who ruined my wedding was you.
Doña Elena fell silent for the first time.
Diego talked about filing a complaint. I was exhausted, with a newborn in my arms and my body still trembling. Part of me wanted justice. Another part, more confused, thought that maybe, because she was family, we should let it go.
But a week later, Doña Elena showed up at our house at one in the morning.
She was banging on the door like a madwoman.
—Open up! I want to see my granddaughter! You can’t take her away from me!
I locked myself in the bedroom with Camila while Diego threatened to call the police. The next day, she sent an extremely long message to the family group chat.
That was when we discovered the real reason.
It wasn’t Valeria. It wasn’t the wedding. It wasn’t the spotlight.
It was something much sicker.
And when Diego read the last paragraph out loud, we all understood that this was only going to get worse…
PART 3
Doña Elena wrote that no one understood her. That she had sacrificed her life raising three children alone. That she had always had to compete against exhaustion, against abandonment, against lack of money.
Up to that point, I almost felt sorry for her.
But then she continued.
She said that when she found out I was pregnant, it bothered her to see Diego so happy. It bothered her that Valeria and Sofía talked about the baby with excitement. It bothered her that in the family chat, people asked about my ultrasounds, my cravings, the name.
“Before, I was the center of my children’s lives,” she wrote. “Now everything is Camila.”
