It seeped into the room the way dampness creeps into walls—quietly, patiently, until one day it is everywhere and you can no longer remember what the air used to feel like before it changed.

“The road accident was an accident. You know that. If I had called an ambulance, everything would have fallen apart. We had already lost too much. I wasn’t going to lose everything.”

My eyes remained fixed on that line.

About the road.

Accident.

Ambulance.

I felt nauseous.

I searched through the papers desperately.

And then I found it.

A printed newspaper article.

A local news story from Monterrey from two months ago.

The headline read:

**“PREGNANT WOMAN DISAPPEARS AFTER LEAVING A MEDICAL APPOINTMENT.”**

The photograph was the same.

Mariana.

The woman with the credential.