checked again.

By the time I reached the additional number, the phone had slipped from my hand and hit the floor.

Fifty million pesos.

I sat there on the cold tile unable to breathe correctly, my fingers crushing the edge of the ticket.

People imagine that winning a prize like that instantly fills your head with luxury, vanity, or revenge.

None of those things came to me first.

I pictured Emiliano in a good school.

I pictured medical care without fear, rent or mortgage paid without counting coins, a house full of light, a real vacation, a bed large enough that my son did not end up curled against the wall whenever he climbed in beside me.

Then I thought of Alvaro.

I imagined his face when I told him we were safe.

No more debts.

No more pressure.

No more dark moods hanging over dinner.

I imagined him finally breathing like a man released from a sentence.

In my mind, money was not going to change who we were.

It was only going to rescue what was already good.

I cried from happiness.

Emiliano laughed because I was laughing and crying at once.

I kissed his hair, tucked the ticket into the inner pocket of my purse, grabbed the diaper bag on instinct even though he barely needed it anymore, and called a taxi.

I did not want to tell Alvaro over the phone.

I wanted to see his face.

His office was in Polanco, inside one of those buildings that always smelled faintly of cold air-conditioning and polished stone.

The receptionist knew me and smiled when I walked in with Emiliano on my hip.

I told her not to announce me because I wanted it to be a surprise.

She smiled wider and waved me through.

The door to his office was not closed all the way.

I lifted my hand to knock, and that was when I heard the laugh.

It was a woman’s laugh, low and intimate, the kind of laugh that assumes privacy.

I froze with my knuckles still raised.

Then I heard Alvaro answer in a voice so soft that for a split second I wondered whether I had the wrong office.

He never used that tone with me anymore.

Almost there, my love.

I just need that fool to sign the papers, and she’ll be out of my life without a cent.

I did not move.

My body forgot how.

Another voice answered him, bright and curious.

What if she suspects?

I knew that voice.

Renata.

She was a friend of his sister, or so I had been told.

She had been to my house for dinner twice.

Once she had brought a stuffed animal for Emiliano and kissed me on the cheek as if we were almost family.

Alvaro laughed.

Jimena doesn’t understand anything.

I’ll tell her the company is drowning in debt, that bankruptcy is close, that if she loves me she has to sign the divorce to protect the child.

She always swallows what I tell her.

The first sensation was not pain.

It was cold.

A clean, terrible cold that climbed from my stomach to my throat.

Then he said the part that split me open.

And if later I want the boy back, I’ll get him.

On her