Chapter 12 - WHAT THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE SAVING
Beatriz requested one meeting with Lucía.
Her attorney made the request.
Lucía’s attorney initially advised against it.
Lucía agreed only if both attorneys, the victim advocate, and I were present.
Carmen came because Beatriz refused to speak without her.
We met in a diocesan conference room in Harrisburg.
No habits.
No chapel.
No familiar walls.
Lucía sat across from her mother.
“Why?”
Carmen looked exhausted.
“Because you were disappearing.”
“I joined a convent.”
“You stopped being my daughter.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make.”
“You lost Andrew and decided you didn’t deserve anything anymore.”
Lucía’s voice stayed level.
“So you drugged me?”
Carmen looked at Beatriz.
“I never touched you.”
Lucía almost laughed.
“That’s your defense?”
Beatriz finally spoke.
“After Mateo, you were happy.”
“I was his mother.”
“You smiled again.”
“That didn’t mean I gave you my body.”
Beatriz’s shoulders dropped.
“I thought you were afraid to admit what you wanted.”
“You mean what you wanted me to want.”
Carmen leaned forward.
“Andrew wanted children.”
“Andrew wanted children with me.”
Lucía’s voice broke for the first time.
“Not children done to me while I was unconscious.”
Carmen looked away.
There it was.
Not remorse.
Not yet.
But an understanding she had spent years refusing.
Beatriz covered her face.
“I convinced myself the tea made it kinder.”
Rachel, seated beside Lucía’s attorney, went rigid.
Lucía stared at Beatriz.
“Kinder?”
Beatriz began crying.
“I knew you would panic.”
“Then you knew I hadn’t consented.”
Nobody spoke.
Beatriz realized what she had admitted.
Carmen stood abruptly.
“This meeting is over.”
Lucía did not stop her.
At the door, Carmen turned.
“I only wanted you to have something left of Andrew.”
Lucía looked at Mateo’s photograph on her phone.
“I did.”
Then she looked at her mother.
“You just couldn’t accept that one child was enough because one choice was enough.”
Carmen left.
Beatriz remained seated.
After several minutes she whispered to her attorney, “I want to correct my statement.”
Then she looked at Lucía.
“The last shipment wasn’t my idea.”
Lucía’s expression did not change.
Beatriz swallowed.
May you like
“Your mother ordered it after I told her I wouldn’t do this again.”
That did not absolve Beatriz.
