PART 1
—Tear another one, Teresa, and tomorrow you won’t even have a key to enter this house.
The sentence came out of my mouth so calmly that everyone in the kitchen froze, except my mother-in-law, who was still clutching my white dress in her hands, the one I had just bought for a dinner with business partners in Santa Fe.
Doña Teresa looked at me as if I were an insolent servant.
—Now you’re going to threaten me in my son’s house? —she spat—. You are nobody, Mariana. Everything you have is given to you by Alejandro.
Before I could answer, she pulled the fabric so hard that the dress split in half. The sound pierced my chest. Not because of the money, but because of the humiliation. I had paid for that dress myself, with my salary, from my company, from the account I had before I got married.
Alejandro was standing by the refrigerator, his tie loose and his face tired.
—Mom, enough… —he barely said, as if asking her to stop destroying my things was too much to ask.
I looked at him, waiting for something more. A defense. A firm word. A “this is her house too.” But it never came.
