Here is a full, dramatic ending to the story:
“… other wife, Elena, and their twins back in Seville.”
My fork clattered onto the china, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the suddenly silent dining room. The happy chatter of his parents—my in-laws, or so I thought—stopped instantly. They looked at me with warm, confused smiles, while my husband, Mateo, froze mid-sip of his Rioja. His eyes darted nervously between Patricia and me.
“What did you say?” I asked Patricia, my voice trembling so hard I barely recognized it. The room felt like it was spinning.
Patricia didn’t break eye contact with me, her face pale. “They aren’t talking about the weather, Jen. His mother just asked him, quite casually, ‘Have you told the American girl about Elena yet? She will be expecting the money transfer soon for the twins’ braces.'”
I looked at Mateo. The blood had drained entirely from his face. He started to laugh, a high-pitched, nervous sound, waving a dismissive hand. “Jen, baby, Patricia is—she is misunderstand. She doesn’t know our dialect well. We are joking. It is a… family joke.”
But Patricia wasn’t backing down. She stood up, her fluency turning into a weapon. She fired a rapid string of Spanish directly at his parents. I saw their expressions shift instantly from confusion to absolute horror. His mother gasped, covering her mouth with a napkin, looking between Mateo and me with eyes full of sudden pity and shock. His father slammed his hand on the table, barking a question at Mateo.
“I just asked them,” Patricia said coldly, never looking away from Mateo, “if they knew that you thought you were his legal, only wife. They had no idea, Jen. He told them you were his ‘sponsor’—a business partner helping him with a visa while he worked in the States to send money home. They thought you knew about Elena. They thought you were in on it.”
The last two years—the quick courthouse wedding, the way he always stepped outside to take calls “from work” at odd hours, his refusal to let me fly back to Spain with him for holidays—it all clicked into a jagged, ugly picture. I wasn’t his wife; I was his ticket.
Mateo stood up, reaching across the table for my hand. “Honey, please, listen. It is complicated. In my culture—”
“Don’t,” I said. It wasn’t a scream; it was a command born of pure, icy rage. I pulled my hand back as if he were burning me.
I stood up, my legs shaking but holding my weight. I looked at Patricia. “Tell his parents I am sorry they were lied to, but the dinner is over.” I turned my gaze to Mateo, who was now sweating profusely as his father yelled at him in Spanish.
“And tell him,” I added, my voice steadying, “that he has exactly fifteen minutes to pack a bag and get out of my house before I call immigration and his ‘other wife’ to let her know exactly where her husband has been sleeping for the last two years.”
Patricia nodded, a grim warrior at my side. As she delivered the translation, the dinner exploded into chaos. I didn’t watch. I turned my back on the man I loved and walked to the kitchen to lock the back door, finally understanding every word that had been said in the silence.
