Part 4 — My Husband Introduced Me to His Lover at a Restaurant and Asked for a Divorce, but When He Saw My Smile, the Color Drained from His Face

The phone fell to the floor, and the sound of the call spread unpleasantly across the wooden floor.

Mauricio immediately bent down, but Arturo blocked his way.

“Don’t touch it.”

“My son is involved!” Mauricio shouted.

“That is exactly why you must not act in panic,” I told him.

My voice was strangely calm. Inside, everything was wavering. Mateo’s face appeared before my eyes: honey-colored eyes, a small crack in his upper tooth, and the wooden whale attached to his schoolbag.

I immediately called Sofia.

“Inform the police and send someone to the school,” I told her.

“I am already calling. Do not leave there.”

“I need to find Mateo.”

“Elena, do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then do not play the hero for once. Wait for help.”

At exactly that moment Arturo called his security employee. Mauricio, meanwhile, walked around the room and checked the screen every few seconds.

“That was Veronica’s voice,” he said.

“Really?” I asked.

“You heard it yourself.”

“I heard a voice. But I do not know who was behind it.”

Camila sat on the chair and trembled. Her gold earrings no longer shone. She clasped her hands as if she had to hide the ring remaining on her finger.

“Mauricio, did you know Veronica would do this?” she asked.

“Be quiet.”

“You told me she had left the city.”

Arturo slowly raised his head.

“Veronica did not leave the city. I was only trying not to reveal her location until I finished the financial investigation.”

“Then why did her voice sound?” I asked.

“Because someone used an old recording.”

Mauricio suddenly looked at me.

“Did you arrange all this?”

“Your son’s kidnapping? No.”

“Then who?”

Sofia called me again.

“Mateo is at school,” she told me. “No one came to him. The security cameras showed that an unknown man was only standing by the door and talking on the phone. As soon as security approached him, he ran away.”

The strength left my knees. I clung to the back of the chair.

Mateo was alive and safe.

But this turned out to be only the beginning.

Sofia continued:

“There is one more thing. The unknown man called the school in Mauricio’s name, but the call was made from the company’s telephone system. His voice can be clearly heard in the recording.”

“Who is he?”

“The security employees know him. He is Camila’s brother.”

Camila raised her head.

“My brother is not here.”

“Your brother was at the school half an hour ago,” I told her.

She closed her eyes.

“I did not tell him anything.”

“But Mauricio told him that if he put pressure on the child, I would sign everything,” Arturo said.

Mauricio stepped back.

“That is a lie.”

Arturo took another device from his bag. This time the recording was clearer. Mauricio’s voice could be heard:

“I know the child’s school. Elena will not need to go there. We only need to frighten her.”

Mauricio lowered his eyes.

I realized that this was the moment when a person hears his own words through another person’s ears for the first time. His face changed. He no longer looked like a strong vice-president. He looked like a man who had accidentally entered himself and found nothing there.

“I did not want anything to happen to Mateo,” he said in a whisper.

“But you wanted his mother to be frightened,” I answered.

The police arrived in ten minutes.

Mauricio moved toward me.

“Elena, please, do not do this. I will protect you.”

“I need protection from you.”

They put handcuffs on him. Security took Camila to another room, because her participation in the investigation had also been confirmed. Arturo told the lawyer that he would no longer defend either of them.

In the evening, when I hugged Mateo, he quietly asked me:

“Did Dad do something bad?”

I buried my face in his hair.

“Dad made a bad choice. You are not guilty of anything.”

Two weeks later the court opened a case against Mauricio and Camila. The money missing from the company’s accounts was found. Arturo also presented old documents received from Veronica, and it became clear that she had been unjustly accused of stealing money. For years she had tried to investigate the company’s hidden debts.

Mauricio admitted financial fraud, threats, and an attempt to frighten a child. The court sentenced him to imprisonment. Camila reached an agreement with the investigation and admitted that she had worked with Mauricio on hidden accounts. Her brother was also arrested, but no harm was done to Mateo.

I attended none of the hearings, except the day when Mateo’s custody was decided.

The judge asked me:

“Would you like to add anything?”

I looked at Mauricio.

“I no longer want to be responsible for saving him.”

That was all.

Later, returning to the empty house, I took his things out of the room. Only one photograph remained in the closet—the day of our wedding. I was laughing in the photograph, while he was looking at something behind the camera. I did not tear up the photograph. I simply put it in a drawer.

I saw his office empty for the first time then. Only a dark mark from a pen remained on the desk. And on the windowsill stood Mateo’s wooden whale, which had fallen from his schoolbag that day.

I picked it up in my hand.

“Mom, will there be two of us now?” Mateo asked me from the doorway.

“No, my son. There will be three of us.”

“Who is the third?”

I sat down beside him.

“Peace.”

Three months later I rented a small apartment on the outskirts of Monterrey. In the morning Mateo went to school, and I began working at a logistics company checking documents. At first it seemed funny to me that I looked for people’s lies in spreadsheets, but soon I understood that this was my strength.

Every morning I drank coffee from the same small ceramic cup. Mateo drew at the kitchen table. One day he drew a house on a sheet of paper, with three figures beside it and a large yellow sun above.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“This is me. This is you. And the third is the day when you were no longer afraid.”

The first winter snow came in December. Mateo made a small snowman in the yard and put my old hat on its head. I watched from the window, and for the first time in a long while I was not inwardly waiting for the phone to ring.

But the call still came.

It was a letter from Mauricio. Sent from prison. Three pages said that he missed the house, my food, Mateo’s voice, and the woman whom, supposedly, he had always loved.

At the end he wrote:

“If you come even once, we will start everything over.”

I read the letter to the end. Then I placed Mateo’s whale drawing beside it and wrote a reply.

“We are not starting over. We are moving forward.”

I sent the letter to the lawyer so that he could deliver it to him. I wrote nothing else.

In the evening Mateo came into the house. Snow was melting on his eyelashes.

“Mom, where is the whale?” he asked.

The small wooden whale was on the shelf. The one that had hung on his schoolbag that day when we were supposed to celebrate his father’s promotion and my life collapsed at one table.

I picked it up and attached it to Mateo’s schoolbag again.

This time it was no longer a warning.

It was a path.

And for the first time I knew where I was going.