Chapter 68: Two Lives, One Secret

LUCÍA POV

Winter was colder than I remembered. The bakery windows fogged up with steam from the oven, and I spent the early mornings kneading sweet bread with my belly growing bigger every day. Customers looked at me with curiosity. Some congratulated me; others asked about the baby’s father. I smiled politely, but inside I was splitting in two. Because the father was a man who would never be here. A priest thousands of miles away.

My Aunt Leticia did everything she could to take care of me.

“Sit down for a while, Lucía,” she would say as she pulled trays from the oven.

“I’m fine, Aunt. I need to keep busy.”

She didn’t argue. She knew that working kept me sane, kept me from thinking too much.

But the nights were unbearable. When everyone was asleep, I stayed in the living room, watching television in silence. And there he was. Mateo.

Monsignor Mateo.

I saw him on Mexican news online, in reports, speaking at the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel in San Cristóbal, embracing the poor, blessing Indigenous children. People praised him like a saint. And I watched him with tears streaming down my cheeks, knowing that this man was the same one who had loved me with body and soul during that storm.

I felt proud of what he had become. And at the same time, I felt buried alive.

The pregnancy advanced quickly. My belly expanded as if time were moving faster for me. During one of my checkups at St. Paul’s Hospital, they confirmed something I hadn’t expected: there were two. Twins.

I froze in the exam room, wearing the hospital gown, my hands trembling.

Two lives inside me. Two of his daughters.

The doctor showed me the ultrasound images. I saw their tiny profiles, heard the rapid beating of their hearts. I cried uncontrollably, sobbing so hard that the doctor grew alarmed.

“Are you okay, Lucía?” she asked, concerned.

“Yes,” I lied, wiping my tears with the back of my hand. “I’m fine.”

I left the hospital with my head down, clutching the ultrasound printouts to my chest. I didn’t want anyone to see me broken.

The months passed amid back pain, extreme exhaustion, and a constant fear that gnawed at me. Damián was still in San Cristóbal according to the news, but I received a couple of WhatsApp messages from unknown numbers that froze my blood: “We’re going to find you, bitch.” I knew it was only a matter of time before he tried to track me down.

Every shadow on the street made me turn with my heart in my throat. Every unfamiliar customer in the bakery made my pulse race.

I kept telling myself I was safe in Canada, that no one would find me so far away. But the truth was, I never felt completely safe.

The early morning when the contractions started caught me at work. I was arranging conchas in the display case when a brutal pain tore through me like a red-hot knife.

“Aunt!” I screamed, doubling over the worktable.

She ran to me, frightened.

“It’s time, my girl. Breathe, breathe deeply.”

The hospital was only a few blocks away. We got there by taxi, me clenching my teeth until they nearly cracked, gasping, the pains growing closer together and more violent.

The labor was hell. There’s no other way to say it. I screamed until I was hoarse. I gripped the bed rails with sweaty, trembling hands while the nurses gave instructions I could barely hear through the pain.

“Push. Push hard!”

I did it again and again. I felt like my body was splitting in two, like I was dying. The pain was so brutal, so unbearable, that at moments I thought I wouldn’t survive.

I wanted him by my side. I wanted to hear his voice calming me, his strong hands holding mine, his presence telling me everything would be okay. But all I had was Mateo’s image in my mind, and the cruel certainty that I was absolutely alone.

The first baby girl was born at dawn. Her cry flooded the room, and my tears followed. She was small, perfect, fragile, with a tuft of black hair. The moment they placed her on my chest, I felt an indescribable warmth I had never known before.

“She’s beautiful,” I whispered through sobs.

But there was no time to rest. The second one was coming.

Another wave of pain tore through me. Another raw scream, another battle against my own body that refused to give in.

And then the second baby girl cried loudly.

Two voices. Two lives. Two daughters.

Twins.

They let me hold them for a few precious seconds before taking them to be checked. I was exhausted, soaked in sweat and blood, my body shattered and my mind floating somewhere else entirely.

But when I saw them together, I knew the truth that stole my breath: they had their father’s eyes. Those light eyes that had conquered me, that had looked at me with forbidden love, that had marked me forever.

I cried like never before in my life. I cried from physical pain, from indescribable joy, from helpless rage, from absolute love.

I stayed in the hospital for three days. Aunt Leticia was by my side the whole time, sleeping in an uncomfortable chair, never complaining. She never let me fall, not for a single moment.

When we returned home, the small room above the bakery became an improvised nursery. Two small cribs beside my bed, diapers everywhere, bottles, constant nighttime crying. My life changed completely in an instant. I didn’t sleep more than two hours at a time. But I never complained. Every time I held them in my arms, I felt that everything had been worth it.

I named them Isabella and Sofía.

Isabella for her strength in being born first.

Sofía for the sweetness in her cry.

They were my life now. My only purpose.

At night, when I managed to get them to sleep at the same time, I turned on the television at low volume. And there he was. Always him. Mateo, speaking firmly at conferences, embracing the poor in the streets of San Cristóbal, blessing children who were not his, who would never know they had two sisters on the other side of the world.

I watched him with pride that filled my chest. With tears that blurred my vision. With a sadness that shattered my soul into pieces every night.

I wanted to pick up the phone a thousand times and call him. To say: Mateo, you have two beautiful daughters. They’re just like you. They need you. Please come.

But I never dialed the number. I never sent the message.

I wouldn’t ruin his life. I wouldn’t put his or their lives at risk. Damián could trace a call, a message. He could find us.

He belonged to the world and to God. I belonged to myself and to my daughters.

There were nights when I completely fell apart. I lay in bed with both girls asleep beside me, their breathing soft and synchronized, and I watched them in the darkness lit only by the streetlight.

I stroked their soft black hair. I kissed their warm cheeks.

“You are the best thing that ever happened to me,” I whispered through silent sobs. “And you’re all I have left of him. My only piece of heaven.”

I didn’t know what the future would bring. Whether Damián would one day find us and kill the three of us. Whether Mateo would go on denying his desire for me until he died. Whether my daughters would grow up never knowing their father.

But one thing was clear: they were my reason for living.

Winter gave way to the Canadian spring. The bakery filled again with regular customers. I worked with the twins in an improvised playpen behind the counter, and many people softened when they saw them sleeping together.

“Twins? What a blessing!” they said.

“Yes,” I replied with a forced smile. “A blessing.”

No one suspected the truth. No one knew their father was a monsignor thousands of miles away.

Only my aunt knew. Only she understood the crushing weight of my secret.

“You’re strong, Lucía,” she told me at night, when I sat watching television with silent tears.

“No, Aunt. I’m just trying to survive one day at a time.”

One afternoon in April, while Isabella and Sofía slept in their cribs, a special Televisa report appeared on the screen. They showed Mateo at the Cathedral of Saint Michael the Archangel, surrounded by crowds of faithful. They said his work with the poor of Chiapas had made him a symbol of hope for all of Mexico.

I saw him smile with that smile I knew so well. I saw him hug a barefoot Indigenous child. I saw him raise the cross firmly as he blessed hundreds of people.

I felt so proud of him I could burst. And at the same time, a part of me shattered into a thousand sharp pieces.

That man had been inside me. That man was the father of my twin daughters.

But now he belonged to everyone. And I had to settle for watching him from afar, clinging to my two little girls who would never know his voice.

That night, with Isabella and Sofía asleep in my arms, one on each side, I accepted the final truth.

Mateo and I would never be together again.

Fate had taken him from me. Faith had claimed him. Life had turned him into something untouchable, sacred.

I would love him in silence until the last day of my existence.

Meanwhile, I had Isabella and Sofía.

My twins.

My pride.

My pain.

My salvation.

The secret I would take to the grave.