PART 1

Mariana was seven months pregnant when she stopped getting out of bed.

At first, Julian told himself it was normal. Pregnancy was hard. She was tired. Her body was carrying their first child, and he wanted to believe that all she needed was rest, patience, and the little things he could still afford to give her.

They lived in a small apartment in the Portales neighborhood of Mexico City, the kind of place where the buses started rumbling past before six in the morning and the smell of fresh sweet bread slipped through the window from the bakery down the block. It was not fancy, but it was theirs. Or at least Julian had always wanted it to feel that way.

From the day they found out Mariana was pregnant, he became careful in ways he had never been before. He worked as a manager at a hardware store near the Central de Abasto, and before leaving each morning, he would set a glass of lime water on the nightstand, along with gelatin, chopped fruit, and her prenatal vitamins. He checked the gas. He checked the locks. He left notes on napkins that said things like, “Rest, mi amor,” and “Our baby needs you smiling.”

Mariana used to be full of movement. She washed clothes while listening to cumbias. She scolded Julian for leaving his shoes in the hallway. She laughed at small, silly things, the kind of laugh that made their little apartment feel warmer than it really was.

Then, little by little, she went quiet.

She spent hours lying on her side, covered from her belly to her feet with a blue blanket. When Julian tried to adjust her legs or help her walk to the bathroom, her whole body tightened as if someone had pressed ice against her back.

“I’m okay, love,” she would whisper. “It’s just the weight of the baby.”

Julian wanted to believe her.

But his mother, Doña Carmen, kept planting doubts in his head.

“Son, that woman is acting strange,” she told him over the phone. “A pregnant woman doesn’t cover herself like that all day. She’s hiding something from you.”

“She’s tired, Mom.”

“I was tired too when I had five children, and I still made beans for everyone. Don’t be naive, Julian. Women lie too.”

He would get angry, hang up, and tell himself not to listen. But afterward, he would stand in the hallway, staring at the bedroom door with a knot in his throat, wondering why Mariana looked more afraid every time he came close.

One afternoon, Julian came home early because the power went out at the hardware store. He opened the apartment door expecting to find Mariana asleep, but the place felt too still. The bowl of soup he had left for her was untouched on the table. The glass of water was still full. Mariana was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with red eyes.

“Mari,” he said softly, sitting beside her. “Tell me the truth. What’s going on?”

She clutched the blanket tighter around her legs.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t say nothing. You haven’t been walking right for days. You barely eat. I heard you crying last night.”

Mariana turned her face toward the wall.

“Please don’t ask me.”

Those words hurt him more than shouting would have.

That night, Doña Carmen arrived without warning. She walked in carrying a bag of bread rolls and wearing the hard expression of a woman who believed being a mother gave her permission to enter every room.

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PART 1

PART 2

PART 3

FINAL

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