AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Of course it’s him. I couldn’t have made such a mistake. No. No, I wasn’t wrong, it can’t be. I start to shake, my heart pounding in my ears.
“It’s not! Look at it. Look at it, dammit!”
I haven’t looked at that photo since that day. I showed it to Adrián, but I didn’t look. And never again since then. So now, fearfully, with an awful dread washing over me, I look at the cell phone Alex is holding out.
“But...”
“Look at the fucking tattoo!”
“What tattoo?” I whisper, afraid of what’s coming. I keep repeating to myself: it can’t be possible. It can’t be.
“Bingo! You just hit the jackpot.”
Despite not wanting to, I pick up my phone and study the photo. I close my eyes for a few seconds. Much less than it took me to recognize the man in the photo, or not to, because that guy could be anyone except Alex. I open my eyes. Tears slide down my cheeks. There is no tattoo. There is no tattoo above the elbow. Alex got one a couple years before we got married. But it’s not just the tattoo: that body is not my husband’s. It doesn’t look like him at all.
“It’s not you,” I whisper. “Oh my God.” I need to sit down, and I do it on the sofa, feeling the tears sliding down my face. “God, Alex, it’s not you...”
“No. It’s not me. Thanks for destroying my life for nothing.”
I can’t take my eyes off my phone screen. I think I’m in shock. I’m conscious, but at the same time I’m not.
“If you hadn’t acted like a fucking brat, if you’d just asked me... If you’d barged in the house, even pissed off because another woman was hugging your husband, I’d have explained—after a hell of a fight over you not trusting me, sure, but I’d have explained it to you. I’d have forgiven you. But you didn’t. You ran off to Boston leaving me devastated. Wondering day after day why the hell you’d left me. Why you stopped loving me overnight. Blaming myself for not going to have lunch at your parents’ that day. And when months later I still hadn’t heard from you, I agreed to go on a skiing trip, to try to clear my head. I agreed to ski off-piste because I wanted to forget about you for a fucking minute, and then I had an accident.”
“Alex...”
“And that ended my swimming career.”
“Oh my God.” I put my face in my hands and shake my head.
“You look confused. Do you need me to summarize what I’ve said, Priscila? I have no problem with that: I can’t swim because of you.”
“It was never you...”
“And not content with that, you didn’t even come to the hospital. Poor you. So affected because your husband had cheated on you that you were incapable of visiting him even though he’d had an accident. That’s who Priscila Cabana is.”
I come out of my trance when something niggles at me.
“Why were they in your room?”
“What?”
“In the photo. Your brother and Carolina are in your room. Why?”
“How the hell do I know?! I have no fucking clue, and I don’t care either! Maybe they got off fucking in other people’s rooms. What are you saying? Don’t try to justify yourself!”
“No, it’s not that, really. It’s just... I don’t get it.”
“You know what I don’t get? How could you think that I slept with my sister-in-law? How?”
“I don’t know,” I shook my head again, still crying. “The photo...”
“There’s no fucking photo! There’s not! You abandoned me for no reason! And every time I see this,”—he points to the second scar, the one I didn’t recognize, the one I asked him about before—“I remember everything! That you and only you are to blame for my not being able to swim!”
“Alex...”
“You didn’t trust me. You judged me, condemned me without hesitation. Why? Did I ever give you reason to distrust me?”
“No, never,” I whisper.
