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Valeria dropped the bag.
-My God.
Ximeña stared at Ricardo with a mixture of fear and compassion.
—Did you know anything about this?
Ricardo hit slowly.
And when he did it, something opened up in his memory.
A white hallway.
A fertility consultation.
Claudia sat facing a specialist, with her hands pressed against her skirt.
The doctor said that his tests were “strange”.
What result contradicted another.
Qυe tal había υпa explicacióп пética mυy rara, aυпqυe пo valía la pпa profυпdizar porqυe ellos ya пo estabaп bυscaпdo hijos a esa edad.
Claudia had insisted on doing more studies.
He…
“Why?” he said then.
“We already have a life made.”
And she remained silent.
For the first time in years, Ricardo felt guilt for something other than loneliness, deceit or ridiculous vainness that had led him to feel young in Europe.
Perhaps Claudia knew more than he wanted to know.
Perhaps that’s why he asked to collect that sample before the surgery.
Perhaps he feared that one day he would need an answer that only medicine could give him.
“My wife…” he murmured. “Perhaps she suspected it.”
The doctor barely nodded.
—There is a document in the file. It says: “Patient reluctant to expand study. Spouse requests conservation due to doubt of mosaic or chimerism.”
Ricardo closed his eyes.
For a moment, the living room disappeared. He only saw Claudia in the kitchen of his house, watching him with that old patience of his, as if she knew that he spent half his life running from what he could not control.
When she opened her eyes again, Maria was crying.
“I didn’t come here for money,” he said suddenly, angrily. “I came because I thought my son had the right to know who his father was. But now he’s telling me that you don’t know who he is.”
Ricardo wanted to answer, but nothing came out.
Valeria spoke afterwards, more serenely, although equally broken.
—Are the three babies… really half-siblings?
“Yes,” replied the doctor. “That’s indisputable. He shares the same paternal profile.”
Ximeña let out a breath slowly.
—So this did happen. We’re not crazy. Nothing was ever revealed.
That phrase bounced around the room with a different weight.
Because until that moment, behind the scandal, behind Ricardo’s clumsy excuses and the logical eye of the three, there still floated the humiliation of having learned about others.
The suspicion of having been deceived by an old man with money and too stingy for his own good.
But now the humiliation had a different hue.
It was no longer just a story of infidelity.
It was something stranger.
More absurd.
Harder to name.
Maria dried her tears with the back of her hand.
—So what do we do about this?
Nobody answered.
Ricardo stood up with difficulty. For the first time since they had arrived, he really looked his age.
He walked to the tree, rested his hand on the wood and stared at the garden without seeing it.
—When I went to Europe—she finally said, her back to everyone— I didn’t want to start over. Not a family, not a relationship, not a life. I just wanted to feel… less finished.
His voice was low, tired.
—After Claudia died, my house became a museum. Everything in its place. Everything silent. I would enter the rooms and it seemed as if even the air was waiting to remind me that I was superfluous.
And then I made those videos, people started laughing with me, telling me that I still had spark, that someone could still like me… and I believed it.
He turned towards them.
He already had the easy smile of the gallant who had traveled through Madrid, Rome and Berlin as if time were only a bad comment from others.
—There’s no excuse that will fix this. I deceived them. All three of them. And now it turns out I don’t even fully understand who I am.