Twelve years later, he still spoke to me as if stealing my son had done me a favor.
My hands weren't shaking. They were shaking at the party. But not in front of her that afternoon.
"I'm going to get it back, Jimena. But not to punish you. For him. So that the day he asks, he'll know his mother never gave it away. That it was taken from her."
I sued. And it was the worst thing I've ever done in my life.
Because suing would drag Diego into it. A judge was going to ask a twelve-year-old boy who he loved more.
Seven months passed. Hearings. A court-ordered DNA test, this time for real. Jimena fought for every document. Her lawyers portrayed me as the resentful aunt who lost her husband and wanted to take her sister's son away out of revenge.
Half the world believed them. At family gatherings, they stopped talking to me.
There was one night when I called my dad crying. I told him I didn't want to anymore. That Diego was giving me dirty looks, that it wasn't worth it.
"If you give up," she told me, "he's going to grow up believing his mother didn't really love him. Are you going to leave him with that wound too?"
No.
I endured seven more months for that reason alone.
The court's DNA test came back the same as mine. Diego is my son. Mine.
The judge corrected the document. Where it said "son of Jimena," it now says my name. He read aloud that I had been told my son had died. That I never signed, never gave away, never let go of that child.
For twelve years I carried a guilt that wasn't mine: the guilt of not having felt my baby breathe. That day I let it go. They took him from me. I didn't fail.
But there were no movie-style hugs.
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