Sterile? I Had Children with the Magnate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Sunday Lunch

Aurora announces Brenda to forty relatives; Valeria makes her say it twice on record and leaves with her sister, and Rodrigo says he will end it after the baby.

Sunday lunch at Aurora's house sat forty people at one long table under the lemon trees.

Valeria arrived at one o'clock in a cream dress, with her phone in her bag and her sister's number already open on the screen.

Rodrigo walked in beside her and held her chair.

He had not slept either.

Across the table, in the seat that had been Valeria's for five years, sat Brenda Quiroz.

Her plate was untouched and her hands were in her lap.

"Doña Aurora, please not like this," Brenda said quietly. "I asked you."

"Nonsense, hija. You're family now," Aurora said.

Valeria sat three chairs down, in a spot meant for a cousin.

She took her phone out, set it against her water glass with the screen dark and pressed record under the tablecloth's edge.

Nobody saw.

Aurora tapped her glass with a spoon.

The talk at the long table died down, one cousin at a time.

"My dears," she said, "this house has had a hard few years without a child's voice in it."

Forty faces turned to Valeria, and then away.

"Some of you have wondered. Some have whispered. I would rather you heard it from me." Aurora smiled around the table. "Brenda is expecting Rodrigo's baby."

A fork dropped on a plate.

An aunt gasped, and a young cousin looked at Rodrigo with her mouth open.

Rodrigo stared at the bread basket.

"This is a gift, not a scandal," Aurora went on. "My daughter-in-law has known for years she cannot give him a child. She is a good girl and she has been very brave. Now the Escalante name goes on."

Everyone looked at Valeria.

She picked up her glass of water, took a sip and put it down.

"Doña Aurora," she said. "Could you say that again? Slowly. I want to be sure I heard it right."

Aurora's smile held.

"Of course, dear. You are sterile, Valeria. You always have been. Brenda carries Rodrigo's child, and it will be the heir of this family. We will love you no less."

"Thank you," Valeria said. "I wanted all of them to hear it from you."

She reached out and turned the phone around on the table, so the little red dot faced the room.

Aurora's eyes dropped to it.

Forty people saw the dot.

"What is that?" an uncle asked.

"A recording," Valeria said, and stopped it with one finger. "Of your mother, Rodrigo. Of what she just said about me, in front of everyone she knows."

Rodrigo finally looked up.

"Vale, turn it off. Please. This isn't how..."

"It is off."

She stood, and her chair legs scraped on the stone.

"I came today to see if I'd hear a single person at this table say something kind. Nobody has. Not even you."

She waited, and he said nothing at all.

At the far end, Brenda had her face in her hands.

Valeria picked up her bag.

From the front of the house, a bell rang twice, and then a voice that carried clear across the garden shouted, "Hello? Sorry. I'm the sister. I'm early. Did somebody die?"

Fabiola Ocampo came around the lemon trees in jeans, with a court lanyard still around her neck and her car keys in her hand.

She was a head taller than most of the aunts.

Her eyes swept the long table and stopped on Valeria's face.

"Right," she said. "Vale, who do I have to hit?"

"Nobody," Valeria said. "We're leaving."

"I'd like it noted I wasn't planning to be polite."

"Noted."

Aurora rose from her chair, calm again, pearls straight.

"Valeria. Think of what you are doing. You have nowhere else to go."

"I have a sister," Valeria said.

"Who can't pay for what this house has paid for."

"She can pay for dinner." Fabiola took Valeria's arm. "Pasta. Tonight. Don't wait up for us, señora."

They walked out through the garden with forty heads following them.

Behind them, a cousin's voice said quietly, "Did she just record Aurora?"

Fabiola's flat was on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator and a very loud neighbor.

Valeria sat on the couch with a blanket over her knees while her sister made noodles and swore at the stove.

She did not tell her about the twins yet.

She told her about the hospital, the agreement, the tablet and the lunch, and Fabiola listened without once interrupting.

At nine o'clock, the buzzer rang.

Fabiola opened the door a crack.

Rodrigo stood in the hallway with his tie loose and his hands empty.

He looked ten years older than he had that morning.

"Please," he said to Valeria, over her sister's shoulder. "Come home."

"No."

"I'll fix it. I swear on my father. But it's not so simple. My mother holds the votes on the trust."

"Rodrigo. Say what you came to say."

He swallowed.

"After the baby is born, I'll end it. Brenda gets her money and her house. You and I go back to normal. I just need you to wait."

Fabiola turned her head slowly toward her sister.

Valeria looked at her husband for a long moment, with her hand pressed flat over the children he had no idea he was asking her to wait for.

"After the baby," she said.

"Yes."

"Goodnight, Rodrigo."

She closed the door in his face.

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