PART 1
At 19, Mariana Salgado arrived at her home with a pregnancy test hidden in the bag of her jacket.
They lived in a quiet colony of Querétaro, in a simple but well-kept house, of those where the neighbors know what time you arrive and with whom.
His mother, Lucia, was folding clothes in the room.
His father, Ricardo, watched the news sitting on his chair, in the gray uniform of the factory still on and his hands stained with grease.
Mariana didn’t know how to say it.
So he just took the test and left it on the coffee table.
Lucia was freezing.
Ricardo turned off the TV.
“Who is Dad?” he asked, with a harsh voice.
Mariana felt her chest close.
I can’t say it.
Silence fell like stone.
“Why can’t you?” Lucia said. Is he married? Is he an old man? Did he do something to you?
“That’s not it,” Mariana whispered. But I can’t lose this baby. If I do… we’re all gonna regret it.
Ricardo got up so fast that the armchair hit the wall.
“Don’t come with threats, little girl.
“Dad, please, someday you’ll understand.
“You’re not going to bring a nameless shame here,” he shouted. Either you abort, or you’re long.
Lucia started to cry.
But he didn’t say anything.
Mariana begged.
He explained that he couldn’t talk yet.
He said it wasn’t whim, that there was something bigger behind it.
Ricardo didn’t want to listen.
In less than 1 hour, Mariana was on the sidewalk with a suitcase, 370 pesos in the bag and an old jacket.
Her mother looked at her from the window, her hand in her mouth.
But he never opened the door.
That night, Mariana slept at the bus terminal.
The next day he went to Guadalajara, where a friend of the beef got him a small room behind an aesthetic.
That’s where it started from scratch.
He worked selling cakes in the morning.
He washed dishes in the afternoon.
He studied online accounting when his body could no longer.
And he had his son.
He called it Leo.
Leo was born with the intense eyes of someone who seemed to observe too much to be a baby.
He grew up skinny, noble, curious.
I was asking for everything.
Why the sky turned orange.
Why his mom never talked about his grandparents.
Why there were no pictures of his dad.
Mariana always answered the right thing.
Your dad was someone good.
What about my grandparents?
“Someday, my love.
But that “someday” came when Leo turned 10.
That night, while they were breaking a cheap chocolate cake, he looked at her seriously.
“Mom, I want to meet you. Only 1 time.
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