Chapter 10 - The Door Without a Lock
The hospital advocate found me a family-law attorney named Lena Price, who met us by video call. She didn't speak in dramatic threats. She asked practical questions: Where could we live? Who could take Alma to school? Was Beatriz on any pickup lists? Did I want police to document the events?
"Yes," I said to the last question. It surprised me how steady my voice sounded.
Daniel told Lena that the house belonged to his mother. We'd moved in the previous spring while saving for a place of our own. I had called it temporary. Beatriz had called it permission to supervise us.
"Your mother's ownership doesn't give her ownership of your wife," Lena said. "Or the children."
Daniel looked down.
I finally told him about the week before the bleeding. Beatriz had stood in our doorway and demanded that I promise she could take Nicolás home from the hospital whenever she liked. I'd refused. She'd grabbed the curtain rod to shut the tall window and smacked it against the frame hard enough to make me jump.
"One day you'll thank me for taking charge," she'd said.
"I won't," I'd answered.
That was when she began taking meals upstairs only when Daniel was home. The rest of the time, she left me to manage the stairs despite the pain that had made them difficult. The morning of the emergency, my phone was missing. I had assumed I'd misplaced it until I saw her face.
"Can you prove any of that?" Daniel asked softly.
"I'm not asking for a courtroom verdict from you, Daniel. I'm telling you how I lived."
He went quiet. Later, when Lena called again, she said the police would document my account once I was well enough to speak. Ruth could give her own statement.
May you like
Near midnight, an unknown number rang my hospital room. A familiar voice began before I could say hello.
"Mariana, it's Beatriz. I know you don't want me there. But I can explain what happened to your phone."
