My Brother Came to His Wife’s House to Ask for Money, but After One Question My Mother’s Face Changed

On the day I brought Mariana home from the hospital, my mother did not even deign to sit by her bed—she opened her bag and named the price of my brother’s new car.

Mariana was still breathing weakly. The marks of needles could be seen on her hands, she could not straighten her back because of the surgical wound, and she had the gray blanket wrapped around her knees as if the cold of the hospital had followed her into the house.

I am thirty-eight years old and live in Guadalajara. Mariana is my wife. Ten years ago, we started a small construction-finishing business. At that time, in a rented damp room, we had two secondhand tables, a noisy fan, and old catalogs. We built everything with our own hands.

A month ago, at two o’clock at night, the doctor told me:

“The operation began in time. If we had been delayed even a few hours, the result would have been much more serious.”

I stood alone by the operating-room door. I called my mother first.

“Mom, they are urgently operating on Mariana. Can you come?”

A long silence fell over the phone.

“Mateo has a temperature. I cannot leave him.”

“How much?”

“Thirty-seven point four. But he calms down more with me.”

Her grandson was watching a cartoon at that time, and his mother, Carla, was at home with him.

“Mom, Mariana is very bad.”

“You are her husband, Alejandro. The doctors are there. I am more needed here.”

I called Diego too.

“Your sister-in-law is in serious condition. Come at least once.”

“I cannot leave Mateo. Carla is nervous too.”

He hung up.

Two hours later Mariana’s mother, Elena, came with rain-soaked hair and a thermos in her hand. In her bag she had clean clothes, documents, and warm broth.

“I am here, my child. You are not alone anymore.”

Those four words were enough to make my eyes fill with tears.

Elena practically lived in the hospital for almost a month. Her husband, Rafael, brought food every day and offered to help with the expenses. Mariana developed a complication after the operation, and her return home was postponed several times.

No one from my family came.

My mother called me once every few days, but almost always asked me the same thing:

“You are not abandoning the business, are you? Illness will pass, but if you lose money, later you will not be able to fix anything.”

Diego did not send even one message.

The most painful thing was that Mariana had helped them for years. Once Diego borrowed ninety thousand pesos from us to start a business. We returned it within a few months, and also gave him an expensive phone as a token of gratitude. But my mother turned that loan into a lifelong obligation.

If Diego did not have rent—we paid it. If Mateo was short of school money—we transferred it. Every one of his failed ventures ended at our door again.

I called this family responsibility.

Until Mariana became ill.

A month later the doctor finally discharged us. Mariana had become so thin that her coat hung on her body. She reached the car with my arm.

We entered the apartment in the afternoon. I arranged the medicines on the table, gave her water, and as soon as I laid her down on the sofa, the bell rang.

My mother and Diego were standing at the door.

For a moment I thought that at last they had come to visit.

I was wrong.

“It is good that you are home, Mariana,” my mother said, and immediately turned toward me. “Alejandro, we need to talk about your brother.”

Diego showed me a photograph of a white, almost new car on his phone.

“I am ashamed to go to clients in an old car. I need a better car.”

“And what does that have to do with me?”

My mother placed her bag on her knees.

“We need three hundred and fifty thousand pesos. You can lend it temporarily. A better appearance will also help his business.”

I looked at the blue marks remaining on Mariana’s hands. Then I looked at the woman who had not once looked into the hospital room.

And I smiled.

This smile was not from happiness. I understood something, but I did not yet know how deeply this lie was rooted.

“All right, Mom,” I said calmly. “Give me the phone.”

“What for?”

“I need to check one number.”

At that moment my mother gripped the bag tightly. I took the phone and looked toward the cabinet filled with our documents. Right there, behind her, on the table lay a dark-brown folder whose existence I did not remember the day before…

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I grabbed the folder. My mother immediately stood up.

“This is none of your business, Alejandro.”

“It is lying in our house and my wife’s name is on it. How is it not my business?”

Diego stopped at the door. His phone rang. On the screen I saw only one word: “Ramiro.”

He immediately ended the call.

“Who is Ramiro?” I asked.

“Nobody.”

The phone rang again. This time my mother also looked at it and turned pale.

That same evening I checked the building’s cameras. Two unknown men had stood near the entrance for almost an hour. One of them wrote down my car’s license plate.

In the morning I called our accountant.

“Alejandro, two financial organizations are checking Mariana’s income. Are you taking out a loan?”

“No. How much is it about?”

“Approximately one million six hundred thousand pesos.”

I rushed into the house. The copies of Mariana’s documents were gone. Her personal number, tax code, income certificates—everything had disappeared.

I called my mother.

“Did you take Mariana’s documents?”

She was silent for a long time.

“Only a few copies.”

“For what?”

“Diego needed them. He has a debt. People are threatening him.”

“You did not want money for a car, did you?”

My mother began to cry.

“We just wanted you not to ask unnecessary questions.”

That night I found a small hidden recorder in Mariana’s bag. It had accidentally been switched on while she was in the hospital. My mother’s voice could be heard on the recording:

“Before she wakes up, we must do everything.”

But whom was my mother talking about? And what was that one document that was no longer in the folder…

I listened to the recording several times. My mother’s voice was clearly audible, while in the background Diego’s heavy breathing and the rustling of papers could be heard.

“While Mariana is in the hospital, Alejandro cannot stop us,” my mother was saying. “We already have a copy of her signature.”

“If he finds out about something, he will catch both of us,” Diego answered.

“He will not find out. He always believes us.”

At eight in the morning our accountant, Oscar, arrived together with a lawyer. Mariana slowly came out of the bedroom and sat on the sofa. Her face still showed pallor, but her eyes were clear for the first time, as they had been before the illness.

The lawyer opened the folder.

“The main document is not here,” he said. “But we obtained an electronic copy.”

A loan application appeared on the screen. Mariana was listed as the borrower. Beside it was a signature that looked genuine at first glance.

Mariana looked at the screen.

“This is not my signature.”

“How will we prove it?” I asked.

The lawyer took out a second sheet.

“The witness indicated in the loan application is your mother. Her telephone number and residential address are also there.”

Mariana’s fingers tensed.

“My mother used my name?”

Oscar lowered his head.

“Not only that. Three transfers were made from the company account on the same day you were in the hospital. The money went to pay Diego’s debt.”

Silence fell over the room.

I called my mother. She answered immediately.

“Come home,” I told her. “Right now.”

Half an hour later my mother and Diego came in. Diego’s face was gray.

“We did all this to return the money,” my mother said. “Diego was in debt, people were threatening him.”

“You took out a loan in my wife’s name,” I said.

“We did not want to steal money!”

Mariana tried to get up. Rafael took her hand.

“You used my daughter’s life to cover a debt,” he said.

Diego struck the table with his fist.

“If you do not help me, they will find all of us!”

“You chose this path yourself,” I answered.

The lawyer began preparing a report for the police. Just then a message came to my phone from an unknown number: “If you do not pay by this evening, the next conversation will not take place at home.”

My mother saw the message and collapsed into the chair.

“It is Ramiro,” she whispered. “But he is not only a creditor.”

“What does ‘only’ mean?”

My mother could not answer. At that moment a second message arrived. It contained the address of our company warehouse and seven o’clock in the evening. Below it was one sentence: “There you will see who left you the real document…”