I signed every document myself. I named my children Daniel, Samuel, Lucía, Andrés, and Raquel. I left the hospital pushing a borrowed stroller, carrying five lives—and a heart in pieces.

That night, as my babies slept around me, I made a promise: one day I would uncover the truth. Not for revenge—but so my children would know who they were.

What Javier didn’t know was that thirty years later, he would stand in front of us again… and the truth waiting for him would be far more devastating than anything he had imagined.

Raising five children alone wasn’t heroic. It was necessary.

I cleaned houses by day and sewed by night. There were weeks when rice and bread were all we had. But love was never scarce. As the children grew, the questions came.

“Mom, why do we look different?”
“Where is our father?”

I told them the truth as I knew it: that their father had left without listening, and that I, too, had been caught in a mystery I didn’t understand. I never poisoned them with hatred, even when I carried it quietly myself.

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