I took Mariana to the nearest private hospital with Mateo crying in his car seat and my heart breaking in my chest. In the emergency room, the doctor did not take long to confirm what I already feared.
“Your wife is physically and emotionally exhausted. She shows signs of dehydration, severe sleep deprivation, and extreme stress. Who was taking care of her?”
I did not know how to answer.
Because the answer burned in my throat.
My mother.
A few hours later, when Mariana opened her eyes, the first thing she did was search for Mateo.
“Where is my baby?”
“He’s with me, love. He’s okay. We’re away from the house now.”
Then she broke down.
She cried as if she had been carrying the whole world in silence. She told me everything in pieces, her voice trembling while I held her hand. My mother had called her lazy, a bad wife, a bad mother. She told Mariana that I worked too hard to come home to a messy house. She said a man like me deserved a “complete” woman, not a weak girl who cried over everything.
She took Mariana’s phone away for hours.
She told her not to call me because I was busy.
When Mateo finally fell asleep, my mother would enter the room, make noise, turn on the light, or move him until he woke up.
“She told me a good mother doesn’t sleep while her baby might need her,” Mariana whispered. “She wanted me to look crazy, Diego.”
Something inside me went still.
It was not just anger. It was shame. I had let the enemy into my home and left my wife alone with her.
That night, I rented a hotel suite. We were not going back while my mother was still in that house.
When Mariana and Mateo finally slept, I opened the home security camera app on my phone. We had installed the cameras for safety, not because I distrusted anyone. I never imagined they would expose the truth.
I saw my mother pacing through the living room, furious, talking to herself. Then I watched her enter our bedroom. She opened drawers, searched through papers, and pulled out the folder where we kept Mateo’s birth certificate, passports, and important documents.
I froze.
Then she went into Mariana’s room and took a small wooden box that had belonged to Mariana’s grandmother. Inside was a gold chain with a medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the only valuable keepsake Mariana still had from her family.
My mother slipped it into her purse.
I gripped the phone so tightly my fingers hurt.
The next day, I returned to the house with two police officers to avoid any confrontation. My mother opened the door dressed like she was going to church, wearing pearls, red lipstick, and an offended expression.
“It’s about time,” she said. “Bring your wife back so she can apologize to me.”
I handed her a legal notice. She had thirty days to leave the house, and from that moment on, she was not allowed to approach Mariana or Mateo.
My mother laughed.
“You’re choosing that useless woman over your own mother?”
I looked at her and barely recognized the person in front of me.
“I’m choosing my family.”
Then her face changed.
She leaned closer and whispered,
“Be careful, Diego. A mother knows things a wife should never know.”
That was when I realized she had not yet made her worst move.
