Chapter 13: What the Cut Cost Her

I went after Inés, and I was too late.

By the time I got through the glass door, her car was already pulling out of the clinic's car park.

I stood on the kerb with my hands empty.

"Rodrigo."

Valeria had followed me out.

She stopped a few steps behind me and kept her arms folded over her stomach.

"Go home," I said.

"Which one?"

I did not answer that.

"Ten minutes," she said. "Not here. In the car. Then I'll never ask you for anything in a car park again."

It was the only joke she had made in a month, and it was not a joke.

We sat in her car on level one of the clinic's car park, with the engine off and the windows closed.

She kept both hands on the steering wheel.

"I'm going to say it badly," she said. "I've never said it to anyone, and I've had two years to practise."

"Say it."

"The night I told you I was afraid you'd leave to have a child with someone else."

"I remember."

"I said it because I wanted you to tell me I was being silly."

I turned my head.

"That's all I wanted. I wanted you to laugh and say, don't be ridiculous, Vale, I'm not going anywhere."

"I didn't laugh."

"No. The next morning you were in a clinic with a form to sign, and you came home and made soup."

Her voice caught on the word.

"I sat at the kitchen table and watched you chop an onion, and I knew what you had given up. I knew it could not be given back."

"You told me nobody had ever done that for you."

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