PART 2
The next day I took Don Julián home to the Portales neighborhood. He lived in an old house with rusty iron bars, withered flowerpots, and old photographs in the living room. Everything was clean, but it felt abandoned, as if the joy had left years ago and no one had dared to open the windows.
He offered me an instant coffee and asked me again:
—Are you happy with your wife?
I stared at a wedding photo on the dresser. He and his wife were smiling, young, embracing, full of life.
“I no longer know what it means to be happy,” I replied.
Don Julián got up slowly, went to a drawer, and returned with an antique pocket watch. It was stopped at 3:15.
—My father gave it to me when I turned twenty-one. I thought it was a family heirloom. Later I discovered it never worked. It was beautiful on the outside, but dead on the inside.
He put it in my hand.
—Keep him.
—I cannot accept this.
—Yes, it can. So that you don’t forget that sometimes you spend years taking care of something that has already died.
I understood perfectly that he wasn’t talking about the clock.
That week I started to notice more. Verónica was leaving earlier and coming back later. She said she had clients in Satélite, meetings in Polanco, lunches with real estate agents. And Laura appeared in all of her stories.
One night, while she was taking a bath, her cell phone vibrated on the table. I didn’t want to look at it, but the screen turned on by itself.
“I already have the keys. We’ll finish tidying up the house on Tuesday. Tell him then.”
The message was from Laura.
I felt a blow to my chest.
On Tuesday, Verónica left, saying she was going to show an apartment in Naucalpan. I followed her, unsure whether she wanted to confirm my suspicions or dispel them. She drove to a new gated community in Querétaro, one of those with identical houses, white walls, and private security guards. She stopped in front of a two-story house. Laura’s car was already there.
I parked far away.
I saw Veronica come downstairs with some bags. I saw Laura run out to greet her. They hugged. But not like friends.
Laura took her face in her hands and kissed her.
And Veronica returned the kiss with a tenderness I had been waiting for for years.
I felt something inside me break without making a sound.
That night, Veronica arrived in a good mood. She told me she had closed an important sale. She even asked if I wanted to have tacos al pastor for dinner, as if she hadn’t just kissed someone else in front of a house they were clearly preparing together.
I just squeezed Don Julián’s watch into my pocket.
Before confronting her, I needed to know the extent of her betrayal. I waited until she fell asleep. I took her phone. The password was our anniversary date spelled backward. What a cruel joke.
I found hundreds of messages. Photos. Audios. Plans. “Our house.” “Our life.” “When you finally get rid of him.”
But that wasn’t the worst part.
I found bank transfers.
Verónica had been withdrawing money from our joint account for six months. A thousand pesos here, two thousand there, five thousand one Friday. In total, almost four hundred thousand pesos.
I continued reading with trembling hands.
Laura had written to him:
“Did you tell him/her yet?”
Veronica replied:
“Not yet. First, I want to move the most important thing. There’s no point in making it suffer beforehand.”
He wasn’t letting me.
I was emptying myself.
The next morning I went to the bank and confirmed everything. Then I went to see Don Julián. I didn’t cry until he hugged me.
“Protect what’s yours before you speak,” he told me.
He gave me a lawyer’s card: Samuel Ríos.
Samuel reviewed documents, accounts, the mortgage on our house in Coyoacán, the retirement fund, and the assets we had accumulated over twenty-three years. His face turned serious.
—Your wife isn’t just having another affair. She’s preparing a financial escape without you.
I signed that same day. The joint account was frozen. The divorce proceedings began. Samuel asked me not to confront her until everything was legally secure.
For a week I lived with a burning truth in my throat. Veronica kept arriving late, lying, smiling at her cell phone. I looked at her the way you look at a house on fire from the inside.
The final night came when Samuel called me:
—Ricardo is now under protection. He can speak now.
Veronica arrived at eight with Chinese food.
“I thought we could have dinner together,” she said, as if she could still act.
I sat down opposite her.
—Verónica, I know about Laura.
Her face went colorless.
But when I laid out the screenshots of the transfers, I realized there was something worse than infidelity.
His fear wasn’t losing me.
It was that I had arrived on time.
And then her cell phone rang.
It was Laura.
The call came in just as the whole truth was about to explode…
