Chapter 27 #2
“You said you knew me. You said you loved my calloused hands, my simplicity, and everything I’ve survived.
But when your mother died, you used every part of my story to turn me into a criminal.
” Maria Rita clutched her stomach over her sweater.
“You called me trash because you always knew where I came from. That word didn’t come from grief. It was hidden inside you.”
I closed my eyes for a second, feeling the memory of the word I’d uttered inside the car cut through my consciousness once again.
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.” She stepped toward me, driven by her own outrage.
“You can’t even imagine what it was like to walk barefoot through the streets of a city I didn’t know, wearing clothes covered in blood.
You’ll never understand what it’s like to look at a bakery and not have enough money for a loaf of bread.
You don’t know how I felt when a stranger offered me food and had to ask me to eat slowly because I was so hungry. ”
Tears streamed down her face.
My whole body begged to cross the space between us, wipe away her tears, and hold her as I had done so many times before, but I kept my hands still on my knees.
I was no longer the man she turned to when she cried. I was the source of her tears.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured, knowing that words were insignificant in the face of what she was describing.
“It’s easy to say you’re sorry from inside a warm office,” Maria Rita said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “You went back to the mansion. You took a shower. You changed your clothes. You drank until you could sleep. I was out on the street, not knowing if I’d survive until dawn.”
“I didn’t sleep.”
She let out a bitter laugh.
“And do you think that matters?”
“No.” I sat straighter, resisting the urge to turn my insomnia into suffering worthy of comparison. “Nothing I felt compares to what I made you feel.”
Maria Rita sat back down. Aline handed her a glass of water, and she took a few sips before setting it on the table. I remained silent until her breathing calmed down.
“Did you know about the pregnancy that night?” I asked when she looked at me again.
“No.”
A fleeting, shameful sense of relief washed over me. At least I hadn’t consciously cast out a pregnant woman. However, Maria Rita noticed.
“That doesn’t make what you did any less wrong.” She wrapped both arms around her belly. “Your daughter was already with me. We just didn’t know it. She was cold with me. She went hungry with me. She listened to my heartbeat when I wished I wouldn’t wake up.”
Pain exploded through me.
“I almost killed both of you.”
“Yes.”
There was no pity in her confirmation. Only truth.
I lowered my head, unable to hold back the tears that fell onto my hands.
“I didn’t know I was going to be a father the day I kicked you out, but I knew you were my wife.
That should have been enough.” I lifted my face, letting her see every piece of my ruin.
“I won’t use our daughter to beg for forgiveness.
I won’t fight for custody, try to take her away from you, or show up unannounced. ”
“Promises mean nothing to me when they come from you.”
“Then I’ll sign whatever’s necessary.” I rested my hands on my knees, resisting the urge to kneel. That gesture would turn the conversation into a spectacle of my pain. “Can Henrique draw up a document? I’ll sign it without argument.”
Henrique looked at me cautiously.
“Are you willing to formally acknowledge that Maria Rita will have primary custody of the child and that any visitation will depend on gradually building trust?”
The question made my instincts rebel. The idea of needing permission to see my daughter triggered a suffocating fear; however, I wouldn’t let that fear turn into control again.
“I am.”
Maria Rita remained silent.
“I want to be a part of her life,” I continued, looking at the woman holding our little girl. “But I’m not going to take her away from you. I’m not going to repeat with our daughter what I did to her mother.”
“You still don’t understand.” Maria Rita shook her head slowly. “I’m not just afraid that you’ll try to take my daughter away from me. I’m afraid that one day she’ll do something you don’t understand, and you’ll cast her aside just as you did with me.”
That possibility broke me in a different way.
“I would never do that.”
“You also used to say you’d never abandon me.”
Those words nullified any promise I could offer.
I nodded.
“Then don’t believe me now.” I kept my eyes locked on hers, even though I wanted to disappear under the weight of my own shame. “Watch me. If I have the chance to stay close, let my actions prove who I’m trying to be, and if I fail, keep our daughter away from me.”
Maria Rita looked at Aline and Henrique. Neither of them intervened.
“I haven’t decided yet whether you’ll be involved in the pregnancy,” she declared after a few seconds.
“I don’t know if I want you at the doctor’s appointments or near me when my belly starts to grow.
Right now, I can’t imagine your hand touching the place where our daughter is without remembering your hands pushing me out of the house. ”
“I’ll respect that.”
His gaze fell to the envelope on the table.
“Do you want to know if she’s okay?”
My pulse quickened.
“I do, but only if you want to tell me.”
Maria Rita opened the envelope and took out a small black-and-white photograph. She held it between her fingers, without handing it over.
“She’s healthy. Her heart is beating, and the doctor said she’s developing as she should.”
A sob caught in my throat. I stared at the image, though the distance made it impossible to make out anything more than a small light spot.
My daughter was there… alive.
“Thank you for telling me.” I wiped my face with the palm of my hand, unable to look away.
Maria Rita put the photograph away again.
“That’s all you’re getting today.”
“It’s already more than I deserve.”
She sealed the envelope and pressed it to her chest.
“I want you to leave.”
I stood up immediately.
The urge to beg for a few more minutes almost got the better of me, but I had promised to obey the first order. I looked at her one last time, committing every detail of the face that had haunted me since the night of the storm to memory.
“I love you,” I confessed, without using those words as a plea. “I don’t expect you to answer. I just won’t lie again.”
Maria Rita showed no reaction.
“Love without trust protects no one,” she replied, keeping her arms wrapped around the envelope. “Go, Eduardo.”
Henrique walked me to the door, handed me back my phone, and opened the gate, staying on the inside.
“You did more than I expected,” he admitted, his expression unchanged. “But that was just a conversation.”
“I know.”
“Her suffering didn’t end just because you cried.”
“I know.”
“And feeling guilty doesn’t mean anything has changed.”
I looked over my shoulder, but the curtains blocked my view of Maria Rita.
“Then I’ll have to change even if she never comes back to see it.”
Henrique closed the gate.
I walked over to the car but didn’t get in. The first raindrops fell, darkening the fabric of my jacket. I stood still on the sidewalk, feeling the water run down my face.
For a few seconds, I thought that enduring the rain was a way to share Maria Rita’s suffering. Then I realized the arrogance hidden even in that gesture.
I could stay there all night and still have a warm car waiting for me, a home to return to, and dry clothes in the closet. The rain would never do to me what it did to her, because I would always have a choice.
I got into the car and closed the door.
Across the street, behind the lit-up curtains, were the woman I loved and the daughter who might one day let me call her dad.
That night, I didn’t leave there forgiven. I didn’t receive a hug, a promise, or even the ultrasound photo. I received only the truth, and it hurt far more than any punishment Maria Rita could have chosen for me.