Then what do you want me to think?
“Trust me a little more.
Leonardo wanted to get angry, but something in that voice stopped him. It was not a simple lie. It was despair.
Over the months, the belly grew. Ricardo wore wide T-shirts, carried backpacks in front, offered for night guards to avoid sleeping near others. One morning, Leonardo heard him moaning behind a door.
“Are you sick?”
“Something is moving,” Richard confessed at last, with tears of shame. I don’t know how much longer I can hide it.
You need a hospital.
“If I get out of here, Silveira kills me.
It was the first time Leonardo heard that name with real fear.
Why would he kill you?
Ricardo lowered his voice.
“Because my brother found out what he and Luna were doing.
Leonardo was still.
“Your brother?”
But there was no time for more. That same week, during a practice in the jungle, Sgt. Luna ordered Ricardo to check an isolated area near the river. Leonardo disobeyed the formation and followed him from afar. He saw the sergeant push Ricardo against a tree.
“I don’t know what you are,” Luna said, “but if you remember anything, don’t leave this jungle.
Leonardo felt his stomach turn.
That night he decided to get Ricardo out of the base. They stole a service van and drove for hours on dirt roads, between rain, closed mountain and puddles that seemed to swallow the tires. Ricardo was screaming in the back seat. The contractions no longer stopped.
“Heaps,” Leonardo said. We’re almost there.
But inside I prayed as I hadn’t prayed since I was a kid.
Now, in the hospital, everything had exploded.
Dr. Marcos left the operating room almost two hours later. His face was tired, but calm.
The babies are alive. They’re two girls. The mother is stable too.
Leonardo was left without air.
“The mother?”
The doctor looked at him seriously.
I need you to wait until it wakes up. This story must be told by her.
Hours later, Leonardo entered the room. In bed was not soldier Ricardo anymore. There was a woman with short hair, face identical to that of her friend and tired eyes, looking at two transparent cribs.
“My name is Roberta Torres,” she said. I’m Ricardo’s twin sister.
Leonardo had to sit down.
Roberta explained between pauses. His brother Ricardo had discovered that Captain Silveira and Sergeant Luna diverted money to medical equipment, food and security of soldiers in remote communities of Chiapas. When he tried to report him, he was beaten and thrown from a bridge near the road to San Cristobal. They thought he was dead.
But Richard survived.
He was wounded in Roberta’s house in Puebla. She was her twin, similar even in the voice when she forced her. She was pregnant for a few weeks and had just ended a relationship that left her alone. Still, he made an impossible decision.
“I cut my hair, wore her uniform, and came into her place to gather evidence,” he confessed. I thought I could do it fast. I didn’t know the training would be extended for eight months.
Leonardo looked at her, devastated.
“And Ricardo?”
