Chapter 2 - The Ride Home
“He said what?”
The guard stopped beside me.
“That you wanted to travel separately.”
Marco had not simply left.
He had explained me away.
A wheelchair appeared before I could answer. The guard had waved to a nurse, who crouched beside me and asked whether I felt dizzy.
“I’m fine.”
She looked at my white knuckles around Mateo’s blanket.
“You don’t have to be fine to sit down.”
That was the first kindness anyone had offered me all morning.
It nearly broke me.
Inside, a nurse checked my dressing and called someone from the maternity ward. I had strained myself, but the incision remained closed.
They brought water.
They found a private corner.
Nobody asked why a woman with a husband and a new baby had been abandoned at the curb.
That made it easier to breathe.
My father arrived carrying nothing but his phone.
He had left his jacket somewhere. One cuff was unbuttoned.
He stopped when he saw me.
For a second, he looked older than he had at my wedding.
“Julia.”
“I’m okay.”
He sat beside the wheelchair.
“Tell me that after someone has taken care of you.”
He asked the nurse what I needed. He asked the driver to install the infant seat he had brought. He asked permission before lifting Mateo from my arms.
He did not ask what I had done to upset my husband.
I cried then.
Quietly, with my face turned toward the wall.
My father kept one hand on my shoulder.
On the drive to his house, my phone lit up.
Marco.
Where are you?
I watched the message until another appeared.
Mom says you’re probably making a point. Don’t drag this out.
I typed one sentence.
Mateo and I are safe.
His answer came immediately.
Fine. Pick up diapers before you get home.
I turned off the screen.
At my father’s house, someone had opened the curtains in my old bedroom. A bassinet stood beside the bed.
He had bought it weeks earlier.
“For visits,” he said, almost apologetically.
I stared at the clean sheets.
“I didn’t want you to think I had failed.”
My father placed Mateo in the bassinet.
“Being mistreated is not a failure.”
A woman waited downstairs when I was ready to speak. Elena Cruz, the family’s outside attorney, had known me since college.
She brought copies, not threats.
House deed. Vehicle registration. Company records.
Before opening any of them, she asked what I wanted.
“I want him away from us while I decide.”
“Then we start there.”
My phone rang again.
This time I answered.
May you like
Marco did not ask about Mateo.
“Julia,” he said, “why is your father’s lawyer calling my office?”
