“You’re not her legal mother, Mariana. So this Christmas, you don’t get a say.”
Alexander said those words at Sunday dinner, right in front of his mother, his sister, and the phone screen where Renata, his ex-wife, smiled through FaceTime as if she had just won a legal victory. I had a spoonful of soup in my hand, and I carefully lowered it back into the bowl so no one would notice my fingers trembling.
Camila, ten years old, was upstairs in her bedroom wrapping Christmas gifts. Thank God she did not hear the man I had loved for eight years wipe away seven years of motherhood with one sentence. “What are you talking about?” I asked.
Alexander took a drink of water, and I could tell he had practiced this conversation. His voice was too steady, too ready, 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, released a sigh coated in that false sympathy she always used when she wanted to wound me politely. “Don’t take it personally, sweetheart. You work too much.
Renata is finally making an effort.”
Renata angled her head on the screen, wearing that soft little smile that made my stomach turn. “Camila needs a present mother.”
A present mother. Me, the woman who had taught Camila to tie her shoes.
Me, the woman who had slept upright beside her hospital bed when she had pneumonia. Me, the woman who attended school plays, parent-teacher conferences, birthday parties, vaccine appointments, and every terrifying night when she woke crying and needed someone to hold her. Renata appeared twice a month, always perfectly dressed, always smelling expensive, always carrying gifts that cost more than affection.
And now 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 expression hardened. “You can’t compete with her biological mother.”
“I’m not competing,” I said.
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