-…

The door opened again.

“Where is it?” asked Andrew.

A part of me still wanted to trust him.

“In the bathroom,” Rebekah replied. Ivonne’s coming up.

Ivonne.

The “friend of the university” who wrote to him at dawn for alleged work pending.

He came in with red heels and a nervous voice.

“I’m sick of hiding, Andrés. You promised me that after the wedding you were going to get her out of the house.

“And I’m going to do it,” he said. Tomorrow I’ll say it dawned weird, aggressive, paranoid. My mom will confirm that you saw her upset. You’ll say he threatened you when he heard about us.

I covered my mouth.

It wasn’t just an infidelity. It was a plan.

Rebekah spoke as if she gave a prescription.

“A woman crying always seems guilty if the man speaks quietly.

Andrés laughed.

Then I remembered my cell phone. I had left him recording on the table to capture my supposed surprise. Maybe the video wouldn’t show much, but the audio was very clear.

“When we sold that house,” said Andrés, “I pay off my mom’s debt, we rented something in Lomas and we started well.

“And Valeria?” Ivonne asked.

“Valeria loves the Andrew I invented. It will be slow to accept that it never existed.

Something inside me broke quietly.

Rebekah walked to the door.

“I come down first. You stay, be sweet and then start breaking it little by little.

The door closed.

Andrés was left alone, serving himself champagne as if celebrating a victory.

Then I slowly came out on the other side of the bed, with the wrinkled dress and the cell phone in my hand.

“Did you also rehearse the vows or did that part come out of your heart?”

Andrés turned around. The cup fell on the carpet.

“Okay…

Don’t tell me that.

He looked at my cell phone. Then the bed. Then my face.