Terribly alive.
Diego looked up and gave a small smile. That smile disgusted me because it was the same one he used when he came back with flowers after humiliating me.
“Mariana,” he said through the intercom. “I can explain.”
I approached.
“No.”
Her smile broke.
“I did it to protect you.”
I almost laughed.
“What about? Peace?”
“I owed money. If they knew I was still with you, they were going to hurt you.”
“Then you sent Brenda to my bedroom, used my voice to fabricate screams, put cameras in my bathroom, and tried to convince everyone that I was crazy.”
He lowered his gaze.
“It got out of control.”
“No, Diego. For the first time, he lost control.”
He remained silent.
I don’t know why I asked the following. Perhaps because the most foolish part of the heart always wants a crumb before closing the door.
“Did you ever love me?”
Diego took too long to respond.
That was answer enough.
“I loved you in my own way,” he said.
I hung up the intercom.
I left before I could touch the glass.
The investigation revealed a truth uglier than I could have imagined. Diego didn’t just fake his death. He had patiently planned my downfall. Ernesto forged documents, manipulated the identification of the body, and helped collect part of an insurance payout that should never have been released. Brenda, to save herself, handed over passwords, schedules, accounts, messages, and videos.
He said that Diego was watching me through the cameras.
He used to make fun of me when I talked to his picture.
He once saw me crying while hugging one of his shirts and burst out laughing because, according to him, “Mariana never suspects anything.”
That almost killed me.
Not the big lie.
The small cruelty.
The idea that my grief was their entertainment.
They also discovered the identity of the man in the accident. His name was Julián Torres. He was 46 years old, a day laborer, and lived in a boarding house in Iztapalapa. He had no children or close siblings. He occasionally helped Diego inspect wrecked cars. The Prosecutor’s Office couldn’t immediately prove exactly how he died, but no one believed anymore that his body had ended up in that truck by chance.
When I heard his name, I vomited in the bathroom of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Diego had told me on the phone: “You’re going to find out who died because of you.”
But Julian didn’t die because of me.
He died because Diego needed a corpse.
Because Ernesto needed money.
Because Brenda needed silence.
Because there are men who don’t destroy one life when they lose love. They destroy as many as necessary to maintain their comfort.
The process was long. Fraud. Forgery. Identity theft. Trespassing. Psychological violence. Criminal association. And an open investigation into Julián’s death.
Ernesto fell too. His wife called me crying, begging me to think of her children. I replied with something that still surprises me, something I said so calmly:
“I thought about Diego for two years. I’m done thinking about men who didn’t think about anyone.”
Brenda testified against everyone. Her voice trembled when I saw her in court. She no longer resembled the red-lipped woman who smiled at me from under my bed. She looked like someone discovering too late that being an accomplice is also a way of burying yourself alive.
My house was unrecognizable for weeks. Experts, bags of evidence, technicians, cameras, cables, duplicate keys. I changed locks, latches, the alarm, the security bars, the doorbell, even the mailbox. They found a microphone behind our wedding photo.
I didn’t break the frame.
I tore up the photo.
I tore it into 4 pieces and threw them in separate bags, as if that would somehow dismantle the memory.
For almost a month I couldn’t sleep in my room. I stayed on the couch with the television on, listening to any voice that wasn’t Diego’s. Doña Elvira came every morning with sweet bread from the bakery and sat with me without asking too many questions.
One day he told me:
“The house isn’t to blame, honey.”
I looked at the walls.
“But he saw everything.”
She put her cup down on the table.
“So that I may see you live now.”
Little by little, I recovered her.
I painted my bedroom green. I threw away Diego’s rake. I donated his clothes. I put the funeral candles in a box and then took them out of my house. I bought plants: basil, lavender, and a bougainvillea that didn’t want to bloom, but stayed alive out of sheer stubbornness.
