Chapter 1 - THE SENTENCE THAT STOPPED THE PARTY
“The baby isn’t real!”
My four-year-old daughter screamed it in the middle of my mother’s anniversary party, loud enough to stop forty people at once.
I was standing under string lights in my parents’ backyard in San Antonio with one hand resting proudly on my wife Clara’s round stomach. Ten seconds earlier, I had been telling my uncles that the baby kicked whenever I played old country music.
Then Sofia pointed at Clara and shouted, “She takes the tummy off in the bathroom!”
Nobody laughed.
Clara’s fingers locked around mine.
“Sofia,” I said carefully, “what are you talking about?”
My daughter marched forward in her yellow party dress, cheeks red with anger. “I saw her. She had a sponge tummy. She was fixing the straps.”
Clara gave a sharp little laugh. “She’s four, Mateo. She thinks my support belt is a costume.”
Sofia shook her head so hard her ponytail whipped her cheek. “No. The baby is pretend.”
“Enough,” Clara snapped.
The word came out too fast.
My mother lowered her wineglass. My sister Camila stopped smiling. Even the mariachi trio near the patio door went quiet.
I looked at Clara. Seven months pregnant, according to every calendar on our refrigerator. We had a nursery. We had ultrasound pictures. We had a name picked out.
“Clara,” I said, “tell me what she saw.”
“She saw me adjusting a maternity support pad.”
Sofia suddenly reached into the pocket of her dress.
“I kept it,” she said.
Clara’s face changed.
“Sofia, give me that.”
My daughter backed toward me and opened her fist.
In her palm was a curved piece of skin-colored foam with two strips of industrial Velcro. A white label was still stuck to the edge.
I took it.
Printed beneath a barcode were five words:
STAGE MATERNITY BELLY — 7 MONTH.
For a few seconds, all I could hear was the fountain behind us.
Then Clara whispered, “Mateo, please.”
I turned the foam over.
May you like
A receipt number had been written on the back in blue ink.
And next to it was tomorrow’s date.
