Chapter 10 - THE FIRST CHILD WAS CHOSEN—THE OTHERS WERE NOT
The full account audit arrived the following week.
It changed the story completely.
The first shipment had been legitimate.
Lucía had authorized it.
She had wanted one child connected to the man she had expected to marry.
She had concealed that choice from me because she was ashamed of wanting two incompatible lives at once.
That was the truth she had been protecting.
But after Mateo’s birth, she had withdrawn permission.
The second and third shipments were different.
Keystone’s audit showed password-reset requests originating from an internet account registered to Carmen’s home.
The credit card used to pay expedited shipping belonged to Carmen.
Delivery instructions directed the containers specifically to Beatriz.
Beatriz’s handwritten cycle chart matched the shipment dates.
Rachel’s estimated conception dates matched them too.
The tea.
The missing memories.
The IV supplies.
The puncture mark.
Beatriz’s fear when I prohibited medication.
Carmen’s strange certainty that Andrew “wanted a family.”
Even Lucía’s repeated wording—“I was never with a man”—suddenly meant something more complicated than I had understood.
There had never been a man sneaking through our convent.
There had never been an affair.
There had been one decision Lucía made freely.
Carmen and Beatriz had taken that one decision and treated it as permanent permission over Lucía’s body.
Investigators believed Beatriz had sedated her during the later procedures.
The IV supplies were likely used afterward when Lucía became nauseated or dehydrated.
Carmen had convinced herself that because Lucía had chosen Mateo, every future pregnancy was simply another version of something she secretly wanted.
Beatriz had convinced herself she was helping a grieving woman become the person she was “supposed” to be.
Neither explanation changed what they had done.
Lucía listened to the investigator describe it without crying.
Then her attorney asked whether she still wanted the first consensual insemination included in her formal statement.
Leaving it in meant admitting publicly that she had once deceived her religious community.
Removing it would make the case appear simpler.
Lucía looked at me.
I knew what she was asking without words.
Would I still stand beside her when the truth became inconvenient?
“Yes,” I said.
She turned back to her attorney.
May you like
“Put all of it in.”
That decision made Carmen’s defense harder.
