My hands were sweating.
My heart was beating so hard I could hardly see.
I refocused my vision and continued.
“I know you told me to take those things out of the house, but I couldn’t take them in the truck. I’ve had enough trouble cleaning the seat and the trunk. When I sort out the Guadalajara situation, I’ll go with you. I just need time so no one puts two and two together.”
Nobody connects the dots.
That sentence left me speechless.
She didn’t say “separate.”
It didn’t say “divorce”.
He didn’t say “explain the truth to her.”
He said that nobody should connect the dots.
I continued reading, my breath catching in my throat.
“The road accident was an accident. You know that. If I had called an ambulance, everything would have fallen apart. We had already lost too much. I wasn’t going to lose everything.”
My eyes remained fixed on that line.
About the road.
Accident.
Ambulance.
I felt nauseous.
I searched through the papers desperately.
And then I found it.
A printed newspaper article.
A local news story from Monterrey from two months ago.
The headline read:
**“PREGNANT WOMAN DISAPPEARS AFTER LEAVING A MEDICAL APPOINTMENT.”**
The photograph was the same.
Mariana.
The woman with the credential.
The wife.
I read the text almost without blinking.
She had left a clinic at nightfall.
He never returned home.
Her family suspected her romantic partner, but there was not enough evidence.
The police continued their investigation.
I felt the ground disappear beneath my feet.
Alejandro wasn’t cheating on me with a living woman who was waiting for him to leave his wife.
No.
Alejandro had hidden from me, literally under my body, the dirty remains of a story that smelled of crime.
And then I understood where that sour smell was coming from.
It wasn’t just humidity.
It wasn’t dirt.
It was clothing that had been stored wet for weeks.
Clothes with old blood on them.
Clothes with fear.
Clothing of a missing woman.
I got up as best I could.
I had to get out of that room.
I had to call the police.
