The morning my twins were laid to rest arrived under a sky so heavy with clouds it felt like even the world was mourning with me. Everything around me seemed muted, distant, unreal, as though I were walking through a life that no longer belonged to me.
Two small white coffins rested before the altar. They were so small it hurt to look at them for too long, because my mind kept refusing to accept what they meant. My name is Lucía Herrera, and even standing there, I still could not truly believe that Mateo and Daniel were gone. Only three weeks earlier, I had felt them moving inside me, alive and safe. Now there was nothing left but silence and a hollow space where life used to be.
The church was filled with people, but their presence didn’t comfort me. They whispered condolences, soft words that passed through me without meaning, like they belonged to another world. My husband, Álvaro, stood beside me, but he felt far away even when he was right there. His body was present, but his spirit was gone somewhere I couldn’t reach. Since the loss of the babies during childbirth, he had become distant, as if grief had emptied him completely from the inside. I, on the other hand, felt everything too sharply—every sound, every breath, every second of this unbearable moment.
Then I felt someone lean in close behind me.
Warm breath touched my ear.
It was Carmen, my mother-in-law.
She didn’t hesitate. I felt her presence before I even heard her voice. When she spoke, it was soft—but filled with something sharp enough to cut through me.
“God took them,” she whispered, “because He knew what kind of mother you were.”
For a moment, my mind went blank. It didn’t process the words at first, like my heart refused to let them in. Then everything inside me broke at once. The tears I had been holding back spilled over, and my voice cracked as I turned slightly toward her.
“Please…” I begged through my sobs, barely able to breathe, “just… be silent. Just today.”
The church fell into an immediate, heavy silence, as if everyone had felt the shift. Carmen’s expression hardened. There was no hesitation, no restraint. Her hand struck my face with such force that the sound echoed through the entire church.
Before I could even regain my balance, she shoved me forward. My forehead hit the edge of one of my sons’ coffins. Pain exploded through my head, sharp and blinding, and for a moment I couldn’t tell where the physical pain ended and the emotional one began. Warm blood slid down my skin as everything started to blur.
She leaned in again, close enough that I could smell her perfume, and her voice dropped into something even more dangerous.
“Be quiet,” she hissed, “or you’ll end up with them.”
A wave of gasps spread through the church. Chairs shifted. Someone stood. Voices rose in shock. I collapsed to my knees, shaking uncontrollably, my blood mixing with tears as I tried to hold myself together.
Álvaro didn’t move.
He didn’t step forward. He didn’t stop her. He just stood there, frozen, watching me as though I were already gone.
For a moment, it felt like everything had ended right there.
Then a voice cut through the chaos from the back of the church—steady, firm, and completely unexpected.
“That’s enough.”
Every head turned.
And everything began to change.