Chapter 3 - A Forged Name
The hospital took Valeria straight to labor and delivery.
Alejandro tried to follow, but a nurse asked him to wait while the medical team examined her. He sat beneath fluorescent lights with the photograph in his hand.
He remembered opening the plain envelope at his office. He had recognized the mansion, the stranger, and the time stamp. Then he had gone home and accused Valeria.
He had never asked who sent it.
Daniel sat across from him.
“How long have you been treating her?” Alejandro asked.
“Four days.”
“Since the fall.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you get her out of that house?”
“I told her she needed a hospital. She was afraid Esther would use it against her.”
“How?”
“Ask Valeria. She knows more about the papers than I do.”
A doctor came out twenty minutes later. The baby’s heartbeat was strong. Valeria’s injuries needed treatment and documentation, but there was no sign of immediate danger to the pregnancy.
Alejandro bent forward, relief making him weak.
“She wants to speak with the police,” the doctor added.
“Please help her do that.”
When he entered Valeria’s room, she lay beneath a white blanket, looking exhausted.
“I should have believed you,” he said.
“You should have asked me what was wrong.”
He accepted the correction. “You’re right.”
She reached beneath her pillow and gave him a folded photocopy.
“Esther wanted me to sign this.”
At the top was a heading: Emergency Guardianship Petition.
Alejandro read the claims. Valeria was described as unstable. Her fall was blamed on drinking. The petition also called Alejandro an absent husband who traveled too often to care for a child.
The proposed guardian was Esther.
“This is absurd,” he said.
“Look at the last page.”
His signature sat beneath the statement.
Alejandro stared at it. It resembled his handwriting, but it wasn’t his signature.
“I didn’t sign this.”
“I know.”
“Who made it?”
“I don’t know. I found this copy in Gabriel’s study. Esther caught me before I could find the original.”
Valeria’s hands gripped the blanket.
“She said nobody would believe me about the stairs once you saw the photograph of Daniel. Then she told me she knew something about my mother.”
May you like
“Lucia?”
Valeria nodded. “She said my mother’s death wasn’t the story I’d been told.”
