I picked up a pen and started my homework. I had a long way to go, but for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of the morning.
Part 3: The Reconstruction of Souls
The courtroom was smaller than I imagined. It didn’t have the grand, mahogany pillars of the movies; it smelled of floor wax and old paper. But as I sat in the witness stand, the weight of the air felt like a physical pressure against my lungs. I was sixteen now. My belly was a prominent curve beneath my white maternity blouse—a living, breathing defiance of everything the Rivas family had tried to bury.
Across the aisle, Mateo looked unrecognizable. The “Golden Boy” tan had faded into a sickly, fluorescent pallor. He didn’t look at me. He couldn’t. Beside him, Mrs. Rebeca Rivas sat like a marble statue, her designer suit a sharp contrast to the cold iron of the situation.
But the person who haunted my dreams wasn’t Mateo. It was the woman in the orange jumpsuit sitting in the back: Aunt Patricia.
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