Because my daughters had been carrying this alone — with only Marisol — believing their own father would choose a woman over them. And they’d been almost right. I’d been three months from proving them right.
I was never going to be that father again.
And Marisol. I sat with Marisol too, and I did not know how to thank a woman who had spent months absorbing abuse, risking her job, being called a thief and a nobody, because she would not leave two children unprotected.
“You could have stayed out of it,” I said. “You could have kept your head down and kept your job. Most people would have. Why didn’t you?”
Marisol looked at me like the answer was obvious.
“Because someone had to stand in front of them, Mr. Vance,” she said. “Their mother was gone. You were away. Who was going to protect those babies if not me? I didn’t care what she called me. I’ve been called worse. But I was not going to let that woman hurt Valeria and Sofia while I stood there and watched.
