Or maybe she loved the version of herself she saw reflected in his attention: worthy, interesting, chosen.
Teresa hated her from the beginning.
Not openly at first. Teresa was too skilled for that. She arrived with covered dishes and comments hidden inside compliments. “How practical, Mariana, that you wear such simple clothes. Nurses don’t need vanity.” “How strong you are, paying for things yourself. Some women have no choice, of course.” “Rodrigo has always been delicate. You must not pressure him with your hospital energy.” Little by little, she moved into their marriage without bringing a suitcase. First it was Sunday dinners. Then Tuesdays, because Rodrigo was lonely while Mariana worked. Then she started keeping a robe in the guest room. Then slippers. Then a drawer. Then opinions about the furniture, groceries, laundry, curtains, and the “coldness” of Mariana’s bookshelves.
Every time Mariana objected, Rodrigo sighed. “She’s my mother.”
As if motherhood were a permit to trespass.
Mariana pulled her phone from her bag and called the one person she should have called years ago.
“Anika?” she whispered when her friend answered.
Anika Brooks was a charge nurse in the cardiac unit, a single mother, and the kind of woman who could insert an IV into a rolling vein while telling a surgeon he was wrong without raising her voice. She had watched Mariana shrink for years and had stopped pretending not to notice. “Girl, it’s almost ten,” Anika said. “Why are you whispering?”
Mariana looked at the locked door. “I need you to come over.”
Anika’s voice changed instantly. “Did he hit you?”
“No.”
