“Before the sun rises, Valeria is going to look crazy… and that house of St. Angel will be ours.”
I heard that phrase from below the double bed, with the wedding dress crushed against the floor and the veil stuck on a board.
I, Valeria Castillo, had just married less than 3 hours ago with Andrés León, the man who for years made me believe that love could be quiet. The wedding had been in a house of the Roma colony, with white flowers, mariachi and my mother-in-law, Doña Rebeca, crying in front of everyone as if she really loved me.
“You’re my daughter,” she said in her ear.
How easy he had been given to lie.
I hid under the bed for an innocent joke. Andrés went down to the lobby saying he forgot his watch. I thought that when I came back, he would come out suddenly, he would laugh and that would be our first anecdote as husbands.
But the first one to enter was Rebecca.
I recognized his silver sneakers and his expensive perfume.
“I’m up there,” he said on the phone. Valeria’s fool doesn’t suspect anything. She’s probably in the bathroom taking off that poor bride makeup.
A woman’s voice answered on speakerphone:
Did he sign everything?
Rebekah let out a giggle.
“Enough. Andrés just needs to make her unstable for a few days. Then we scare him with a doctor, with the family and with a supposed nervous episode. He’s going to hand over the house alone.
The house.
The house of St. Angel that I had bought 4 months before the wedding. An old property, with bougaimbilias at the entrance and a courtyard where I imagined Sundays with pot coffee, sweet bread and children running.
Andrew thought we bought it together.
The truth was another: I had paid it full.
What he didn’t know was that my full name was not Valeria Castillo, but Valeria Montes Castillo. Nieta de Amalia Montes, founder of a well-known family construction company in Mexico City. My grandmother taught me that if someone loves you by your last name, she doesn’t love you. That’s why he lived simple, worked in a clinic in Coyoacán and never talked about family money.
Andrés thought I was alone.
And that’s why he dared.
The door opened again.
“Where is it?” asked Andrew.
A part of me still wanted to trust him.
“In the bathroom,” Rebekah replied. Ivonne’s coming up.
Ivonne.
The “friend of the university” who wrote to him at dawn for alleged work pending.
He came in with red heels and a nervous voice.
“I’m sick of hiding, Andrés. You promised me that after the wedding you were going to get her out of the house.
“And I’m going to do it,” he said. Tomorrow I’ll say it dawned weird, aggressive, paranoid. My mom will confirm that you saw her upset. You’ll say he threatened you when he heard about us.
I covered my mouth.
It wasn’t just an infidelity. It was a plan.
Rebekah spoke as if she gave a prescription.
“A woman crying always seems guilty if the man speaks quietly.
Andrés laughed.
Then I remembered my cell phone. I had left him recording on the table to capture my supposed surprise. Maybe the video wouldn’t show much, but the audio was very clear.
“When we sold that house,” said Andrés, “I pay off my mom’s debt, we rented something in Lomas and we started well.
“And Valeria?” Ivonne asked.
“Valeria loves the Andrew I invented. It will be slow to accept that it never existed.
Something inside me broke quietly.
Rebekah walked to the door.
“I come down first. You stay, be sweet and then start breaking it little by little.
The door closed.
Andrés was left alone, serving himself champagne as if celebrating a victory.
Then I slowly came out on the other side of the bed, with the wrinkled dress and the cell phone in my hand.
“Did you also rehearse the vows or did that part come out of your heart?”
Andrés turned around. The cup fell on the carpet.
“Okay…
Don’t tell me that.
He looked at my cell phone. Then the bed. Then my face.
