“You are getting out of this house today!” Rodrigo shouted, and before I could even respond, he slapped me in front of his entire family.
The blow sent me crashing against the foyer console table. A glass shattered on the floor, but nobody moved. Not his sister, not his uncles, not the cousins who had just toasted his mother’s birthday. Everyone was waiting to see if I would cry or disappear in silence.
Evelyn was the only one who smiled.
“Finally, you put her in her place, son,” she said, adjusting the pearl necklace I myself had gifted her. “This woman already felt like she owned everything.”
I put my hand to my cheek. Rodrigo was breathing heavily, filled with that fury that always surfaced whenever his mother pretended to be attacked.
The argument had started during lunch. We were at the house in Beverly Hills, a massive residence with a garden, an elevator, and a kitchen that Evelyn showed off as if she had worked her entire life to buy it. She had hired a live band, a chef, and waiters to celebrate her 62nd birthday. I had paid for everything, but nobody knew.
Halfway through dessert, she raised her glass.
“A toast to my son, because despite marrying a cold woman, he still supports this entire family.”
Some laughed. Rodrigo looked down, but he didn’t contradict her.
Then she said that I didn’t know how to be a wife and that my inability to get pregnant was a punishment for putting work first.
We had lost a pregnancy 8 months ago.
Rodrigo knew that I still woke up crying some nights. Even so, he kept cutting his cake as if his mother were talking about the weather.
“Do not use my baby’s death to humiliate me ever again,” I told her.
Evelyn set her spoon down on the plate.
“He was my grandson too.”
“Then you should have respected him.”
She put a hand to her chest.
“Did you hear how she speaks to me in my own home?”
Rodrigo stood up. I thought he was finally going to defend me. Instead, he walked over to me and hit me.
With my face burning and the taste of blood in my mouth, I understood it hadn’t been an impulse. It had been a choice.
“Go upstairs for your clothes,” he ordered. “The jewelry stays, and so do the SUV and the cards. You won’t take anything that I paid for.”
Evelyn crossed her arms.
“And hand over the keys. This house is Sanders family heritage, not a refuge for ungrateful people.”
I looked at the marble floors, the oak staircase, and the light fixtures brought in from New York. I had authorized every invoice. I had bought that property through a holding company 6 months before getting married.
Rodrigo never asked why the mortgage disappeared from one day to the next.
Nor did he ask who covered the 9,000 dollars a month that his mother received for a driver, her club, medicines, and trips. He believed it came from a trust fund left by his father, even though that money had run out years ago.
I kept up the lie because Rodrigo claimed Evelyn would get sick if she discovered her bankruptcy. I also rescued his construction company when he lost 2 contracts. I paid payroll and debts through loans from a company he never investigated.
Everyone believed I was living off the Sanders name.
The truth was exactly the other way around.
I grabbed my purse and walked toward the door.
“Is that it?” Rodrigo asked. “Aren’t you even going to apologize?”
I stopped.
