Chapter 6 - “ANDREW WANTED A FAMILY”
Carmen arrived instead of answering the phone.
She came through the visitor entrance carrying a diaper bag and two grocery sacks as though she were arriving for an ordinary Sunday visit.
When she saw Rachel in my office, she stopped.
“What is she doing here?”
Lucía stood beside me.
“Sit down, Mom.”
Carmen did not.
“You look awful. You need to eat.”
“Did you send packages to Beatriz?”
Carmen set the groceries down.
“I helped with medical expenses.”
“What medical expenses?”
“You’ve had difficult pregnancies.”
Lucía stared at her.
“I wasn’t pregnant six weeks ago when you signed for that package.”
Carmen’s mouth tightened.
“You were trying to be.”
The words seemed to strike Lucía physically.
She grabbed the edge of my desk.
“I was what?”
Carmen looked at Beatriz’s empty chair, then at me.
“This is what happens when outsiders start asking questions they don’t understand.”
“I’m your daughter.”
“And you haven’t acted like it in years.”
Lucía flinched.
Carmen immediately softened.
“Honey, I lost you after Andrew died. You came here and disappeared behind those walls.”
“Don’t bring Andrew into this.”
“He wanted a family.”
Lucía stopped breathing.
Rachel moved closer to her.
Carmen realized too late that she had said something important.
Lucía whispered, “How do you know these children have anything to do with Andrew?”
Carmen looked away.
That was the first moment I understood that the pregnancies might not involve a man secretly entering Santa Clara at all.
Lucía began crying without making a sound.
Not the panicked crying I expected.
The exhausted crying of someone who had feared a truth long before she had language for it.
I asked Carmen to leave.
She refused until I told her the diocesan attorney had instructed me to restrict her access to the residential wing.
“You’re turning my daughter against me.”
“No,” Lucía said.
Everyone looked at her.
She wiped her face.
“I think you already did that.”
Carmen left.
An hour later, Sister Miriam came to Lucía’s room with clean laundry.
She had always believed Lucía should have been asked to leave after Mateo was born.
Instead she sat beside her and said, “I was wrong about you.”
It was the first loyalty inside Santa Clara to shift openly.
That afternoon Lucía told Rachel she wanted genetic testing.
“If my sons are Andrew’s,” she said, “I need to know.”
Rachel explained that comparing the boys to Lucía would establish maternity, not paternity.
Lucía stared through the window.
“Andrew’s parents are alive.”
“Would they help?”
May you like
“I haven’t spoken to them since his funeral.”
She picked up her phone.
