You’re not her legal mother, Mariana. So this Christmas, you don’t get a say.”
Alexander said it during Sunday dinner, right in front of his mother, his sister, and the phone screen where Renata, his ex-wife, was smiling on FaceTime like she had just won a courtroom battle. I had a spoonful of soup in my hand, and I slowly placed it back in the bowl so nobody would see my fingers shaking.
Camila, 10 years old, was upstairs wrapping Christmas gifts in her room. Thank God she didn’t hear the man I had loved for 8 years erase 7 years of motherhood with one sentence.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
Alexander took a sip of water, and I could tell he had rehearsed this. His voice was too calm, too prepared, too cruel.
“Renata and I talked,” he said. “Camila is spending Christmas in Aspen with her. I’m going too. Two weeks, from December 23rd to January 6th. She needs time with her real parents.”
His mother, Patricia, sighed with that fake sympathy she always used when she wanted to hurt me politely. “Don’t take it personally, sweetheart. You work too much. Renata is finally making an effort.”
Renata tilted her head on the screen, wearing that soft little smile that made my stomach twist. “Camila needs a present mother.”
A present mother. Me, the woman who taught Camila how to tie her shoes. Me, the woman who slept sitting up beside her hospital bed when she had pneumonia. Me, the woman who went to school plays, parent-teacher meetings, birthday parties, vaccine appointments, and every nightmare-filled night when she cried for someone to hold her.
Renata showed up twice a month, always perfectly dressed, always smelling expensive, always carrying gifts that cost more than love. And suddenly, she was the mother who had “come back.”
“I already took those days off,” I said carefully. “I promised Camila we’d bake Christmas cookies and go see the lights at Rockefeller Center.”
Alexander’s face hardened. “You can’t compete with her biological mother.”
“I’m not competing,” I said. “I raised her.”
“You watched her,” Renata corrected from the screen. “And we appreciate that.”
We appreciate that. Like I had been a babysitter.
I stood up from the table. Alexander stood up too, like he had been waiting for me to break.
“If you can’t accept this, then let’s make it simple,” he said, lowering his voice. “Divorce.”
