Chapter 20: On Every Screen

The recording played on, and nobody in the ballroom moved.

*You are sterile, you are sterile.*

On the screens, the words rolled across in white letters, and under them a date and a place: *Sunday lunch, the Escalante house.*

Four hundred people looked at the stage.

Aurora stood frozen with her glass still raised.

"Turn that off," she said, in a low, even voice. "Turn it off."

Nobody moved.

The next clip began, and this time it was a tearoom, and Aurora's own voice came out clear and warm.

*The girl, I would think. Girls are easier to place.*

A woman near the front dropped her fork.

*Whatever happens in your belly is a spare.*

"Stop it!" Aurora shouted.

She dropped the glass.

It broke on the stage, and a waiter jumped.

"Cut the power," she said to a technician at the side. "Now. Cut the power to the screens!"

The technician, a boy in a black shirt, stepped back and folded his arms.

"Sorry, doña," he said. "I was told the chief of staff has final say."

Aurora turned toward Brenda.

Brenda stood next to her, one hand on her belly, perfectly still.

Valeria felt Fabiola's elbow dig into her ribs.

"I'd like this on a plate with a lemon," Fabiola whispered. "Just the word spare."

"Hush."

"I'm only saying."

The third thing on the screens was a photograph of a typed letter.

*Declaration of Consent, signed Valeria Ocampo.*

Beside it, a photograph of a marriage certificate.

The two signatures sat side by side, one above the other.

A red circle appeared around the loop of the V in each.

They were identical down to the tail.

"Nobody signs their own name the same way twice," Fabiola said, loud enough that three tables heard. "Look at the pressure. It's a trace."

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