I heard Dad talking on the phone. He told someone that… he doesn’t love you. That he’s only with you because you take good care of me. He also said that he has someone else and that he wants to leave you.
I felt my legs failing me. I had to hold on to the laundry room so I wouldn’t fall. My head was spinning. Had he lived two years in a lie? Was it just the woman who was taking care of his daughter while he was with another?
I tried to stay calm.
Are you sure what you heard? Won’t it have been a misunderstanding?
Camila nodded with her eyes full of tears.
I heard it clearly. I don’t want Dad to leave you. You’re good to me.
I hugged her tightly. Tears burned my eyes, but I didn’t want to be shattered.
That afternoon, when Ricardo came back, I confronted him directly.
“Ricardo, tell me the truth. Do you feel anything for me or did you just use me to take care of Camila?
He was silent for a few seconds. Then he lowered his head.
“Forgive me, Valeria. I’m not in love with you. But she needed Camila to have someone to take care of her. And yes… I’ve been with someone else for a while.
I felt something inside me breaking. But I didn’t cry in front of him.
“Then go away,” I said with a firm voice. I don’t need someone who doesn’t love me.
That same night I picked up my stuff. Camila cried and hugged me, begging not to leave. I wasn’t mad at her. I never was. But I couldn’t live by the side of a man who had lied to me from the beginning.
I returned to my mother’s house in another neighborhood of Puebla and started again. I got a job in a flower shop downtown. It was not easy, but I learned something very important: love is not begged, and self-respect is worth more than any relationship based on lying.
The first days of returning home from her mother in Puebla, Valeria lived in silence. During the day he worked in the small florist near the Zócalo, accommodating roses and carnations with delicate hands, but with an empty heart.
Every night, when I closed the store, I thought of Camila. In her sweet voice calling her “Mom Vale.” In the afternoons doing homework together, in the laughter shared in the kitchen. What hurt him the most was not Ricardo’s betrayal, but to have separated himself from a girl whom he truly loved.
A week after he left, his phone vibrated. It Was Camila.
“Mom Vale… I miss you so much.
Valeria turned her face to hide the tremor in her voice.
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