The institution offered Camila belated apologies and carefully worded statements. She listened without feeling anything. Forgiveness doesn’t bring a child back to life.
What made her bleed again was hearing Renata in the interrogation room. The woman asked to speak with her. Camila agreed because she couldn’t stand the empty spaces anymore.
Renata was without makeup, her hair pulled back, her hands clasped on the table. Even so, she retained that cool beauty that others so admired. Seeing her, Camila understood that some people turn their face into a mask of confidence.
“You look less broken than I imagined,” Renata said.
Camila sat down slowly.
—And you look exactly like a woman who deserves to rot alive.
Renata barely smiled.
—You were always so intense.
—Did you kill my son because you loved Esteban?
“Don’t be simplistic,” she replied with monstrous calm. “I did it because a living child changes everything. A baby isn’t just a baby to men like Esteban. It’s a name, money, obligation, a future. You were disposable. But a child… a child ties you down.”
Camila felt nauseous.
—Did he ask you to?
Renata tilted her head.
—Not with those words.
—So which ones?
“He said that if that child wasn’t his, he wasn’t going to live chained to someone else’s mistake. He said he needed the problem resolved.”
Camila sat up abruptly. The officer on the corner tensed.
—He knew what you were going to do.
“He knew I was capable of doing what he would never dare to get his hands dirty doing,” Renata replied. “And then he knew how to cover for it.”
The phrase emptied his body.
—Why make me carry the guilt for 6 years?
For the first time, Renata’s face changed. Not from regret. From contempt.
—Because you were useful. And because women like you accept the blame before asking for proof.
Camila left there wanting to break the whole world.
The charges against Esteban were upgraded: accomplice homicide, conspiracy, tampering with evidence, and obstruction of justice. The hospital administrator quickly cooperated to reduce his sentence. He admitted to receiving funneled deposits from a foundation linked to Esteban. In exchange, he altered medical records, canceled the toxicology request, and shelved the case, where dead babies quickly cease to matter.
The first hearing was an infamous spectacle. Outside, cameras and onlookers awaited her. Inside, expensive lawyers tried to disguise as doubt what already reeked of monstrosity. The defense attempted to portray Camila as a traumatized, unstable, and untrustworthy woman. They insinuated that grief had altered her memory, that the marriage was already broken, and that perhaps she was interpreting everything through the lens of obsession.
Then the prosecutor did something no one expected. She presented the results of a genetic test ordered using archived samples from the newborn screening and Esteban’s current DNA.
Gael was indeed his son.
The report was conclusive.
Camila held the paper in her hand when it was her turn to testify.
“He was Esteban’s son,” he said in front of the judge, the press, and both families. “The only illegitimate thing here was the excuse.”
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