But Marta acted like she hadn't heard a word I said. She looped her arm through Laura's and softened her voice into something gentle and coaxing. "Dad, it was all just a misunderstanding back then. Mom knows she was wrong. Can't you just forgive her?"
A misunderstanding? The word hit me like a slap. A wave of rage surged straight to my head. This woman had cheated on me after giving birth. I'd caught her. Then she'd flipped it around and accused me of marital rape, landing me in prison for three years, turning me into the kind of man the whole neighborhood pointed at and called a rapist. When I got out, I found she'd cleaned out every account I had, run off with her lover, and left our one-month-old daughter in an orphanage to fend for herself.
And now my daughter, the girl I'd raised for twenty years, was calling all of that a misunderstanding.
I looked at her and felt something go cold inside me. She was a stranger.
"Marta," I said, pressing hard to keep my voice level. "You were too young back then. You don't know what really happened. That woman is a selfish, heartless liar. She abandoned her own newborn daughter. She has no right to call herself a mother."
"Enough!" She cut me off before I could finish. Her eyes were red, and the look she gave me was full of disappointment and fury. "Dad, Mom had her reasons! If you hadn't interfered and pulled me out of that orphanage early, she would have come for me herself. I wouldn't have spent all those years without her, growing up like some kid nobody wanted."
I went still. She thought me taking her out of the orphanage was interfering?
I opened my mouth. Something lodged in my throat like a stone.
Then Laura spoke up from beside her, eyes glistening. "That's right, Andre. I was completely out of options back then. I had no choice but to leave Marta at the orphanage temporarily. But you took her without a word to anyone. Do you have any idea how many years I spent trying to find her?"
Her voice broke. She began to cry softly, shoulders trembling.
Marta immediately stepped in front of her, eyes full of reproach aimed straight at me.