If you don’t talk, I’ll send you back to your village right now!”
Maria fell to her knees, covering her face:
“I… I didn’t want to say it… I was afraid… But if you insist… I’ll tell the truth.”
Carmen held her breath. María wiped her tears and confessed in a trembling voice:
“The father… is your husband.”
The words fell like a lightning bolt. Carmen collapsed in a chair.
María continued between sobs:
“When you left for a three-day trip, he came back home. He had been drinking… he called me to clean the room. I… couldn’t stand it.”
Carmen felt her world crumble.
Her husband, Ricardo, had been struggling with his business for two years; he had become brusque and a hard drinker. But she never imagined he would do something so despicable. Rage and shame mingled.
She looked at María, and although she was angry, she also felt compassion. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I was afraid he would kick me out, afraid of saddening Don Ernesto… I was planning to leave at the end of the month and raise the baby alone.”
At that moment, Don Ernesto came out of his room, leaning on a cane, alarmed by the screams. “What’s wrong, Carmen?”
She burst into tears.
María fell to her knees, weeping:
“Forgive me, sir… forgive me…”
Don Ernesto listened, and his eyes filled with tears. He placed a hand on the young woman’s shoulder and said in a broken voice:
“That child… even if it doesn’t have a father, stay here. I will raise it as if it were my own.”
María wept inconsolably.
Carmen did too, knowing their marriage was over, but unable to throw the girl out. The baby wasn’t to blame; he needed a home. And his father, his hair already gray, was willing to offer his love.
Shortly after, Carmen took Ricardo to court for a divorce. María stayed behind to care for Don Ernesto, awaiting the birth of their child. And he told his daughter:
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it was.
The baby isn’t to blame. May he grow up surrounded by love.”
The weeks passed. Every night, María continued to massage Don Ernesto’s legs, his belly now rounded.
Sometimes, he would place his hand on her belly and whisper:
“Little one, don’t worry. I’ll be here to take care of you and your mother.”
The song of the cicadas faded with the end of summer. A serene autumn arrived, where the kindness of a 70-year-old man saved a young worker… and an unborn child.
