The night after I made that promise, I did not sleep at all, even though my body begged for rest and my eyes burned with exhaustion.
Every small sound from the cribs pulled me back into the same question I could not escape, the one that kept tightening around my chest.
How could this have happened, and why had the man I trusted chosen certainty over truth without even hesitating for a single second.
I replayed Javier’s face again and again, the anger, the disgust, the way he avoided touching even the edge of the blankets.
It was not confusion.
It was rejection.
And that difference would stay with me longer than anything else that followed in the years ahead of my life.
The first months were a blur of feeding schedules, crying at all hours, and learning how to divide myself into five pieces without losing what remained of me.
Neighbors helped sometimes, bringing food or offering to watch one baby while I bathed another, but their kindness always carried a question they never asked aloud.
I saw it in their eyes when they thought I was not looking, that silent doubt that clung to me like a shadow.
