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Camila took a few seconds to react.

—Our son has just died.

“Your son was also my son,” he corrected, but he sounded more offended than sad. “And I don’t intend to spend my life paying for a biological mistake that came from your family.”

She felt like something inside her was about to burst.

—Do you really believe that?

—The doctors said so.

—The doctors said it was something strange, not that it was my fault.

—I don’t need them to say it in those words to understand it.

That was the most brutal part: Esteban preferred an explanation where Camila was the fault. It was easier to blame her genes than to accept chance, tragedy, or the simple impossibility of controlling everything. His family backed him up with that subtle hypocrisy that masquerades as politeness. His mother-in-law started repeating that on his mother’s side, “who knows what kind of history there might be.” His sister-in-law casually remarked that “things happen for a reason.” No one uttered the word “blame.” It wasn’t necessary. They hung it on Camila like an invisible sign and let her live beneath it.

In less than six months, she lost her baby, her marriage, her house in Providencia, and what little dignity she had left. She moved to a tiny apartment in the Americana neighborhood, with damp walls and a refrigerator that sounded like it was about to die at any moment. She worked part-time managing social media for a stationery store, then selling makeup from a catalog, then doing poorly paid translations to survive. She went to therapy because a psychologist from DIF (the National System for Integral Family Development) got her one almost out of pity. She learned to breathe in supermarket restrooms when the urge to cry suddenly struck. She stopped walking past hospitals because her legs trembled at the mere sight of a white coat. And for years, Esteban’s words were etched into her very bones.

Your blood killed him.