So I kept my voice even. “We’re running one more test.”

“Of course,” Renata replied. “Whatever Camila needs.”

She turned back toward the child, but as she did, her gaze landed on the dead plant. The change in her expression lasted barely a second; her smile disappeared, her eyes narrowed, and then the pleasant expression returned as quickly as it had vanished.

That brief reaction gave me something the laboratory couldn’t.

It told me the plant meant something to her.

PART 2 — THE SECRET SHE THOUGHT CAMILA WOULD KEEP

One More Bottle

The police became involved that afternoon, and Detective Julian Ortega met me in a private office where we could talk without Camila or Diego overhearing us. He spread photographs of the bottle, the laboratory report, and the damaged plant across my desk before explaining that although the evidence was deeply concerning, Camila’s statement alone would not establish that Renata knew what was actually inside the bottle.

“She told us Renata gave her the drops,” I said.

“I believe you, and I’m not saying Camila is lying,” Julian replied. “I’m saying we need evidence connecting Renata to the contents of that bottle, not just to something she called vitamins.”

I didn’t like hearing it, but I understood the distinction. The original bottle was secured as evidence, and the hospital tightened the restrictions around Camila so that no visitor could give her medication, food supplements, or any other substance without authorization. More importantly, Camila would never be left alone or placed in a situation where anyone could actually give her something harmful.

The following afternoon, Renata arrived at 4:12 carrying a stuffed rabbit. She sat beside Camila and talked enthusiastically about going home, telling her that the unicorn wallpaper was finally up and that her bedroom looked beautiful. Camila answered very little, and before Renata left, I saw her glance once more at the blackened plant.

The next day she returned without gifts and carried only a small handbag. After sitting beside Camila for several minutes, she glanced toward the hallway and reached inside the bag.

When her hand emerged, she was holding another dark bottle.

Camila immediately moved backward on the bed. “I don’t want it.”

Renata kept her voice gentle. “It’s only your vitamins.”

“Dr. Morgan said I can’t take anything.”

For the first time, Renata’s expression hardened in front of her. “Doctors worry about everything. It’s just a few drops, and this can stay between us.”

She had barely opened the bottle when I entered the room.

“Put it down, Renata.”

She froze. Detective Ortega and two officers appeared behind me, and one of them immediately secured the bottle before Renata could move it.

“What is this?” she demanded.

Julian held the evidence bag in front of him. “We’re going to determine exactly what’s inside this bottle.”

Renata’s face lost some of its color. “They’re vitamins.”

Nobody answered.

Then, in her rush to defend herself, she said the one thing nobody had asked her about.

“And that other bottle you found in Camila’s drawer wasn’t mine.”

Julian looked at her for several seconds before asking quietly, “Who told you where we found the first bottle?”

Renata opened her mouth, but no answer came.

At that exact moment, hurried footsteps sounded in the corridor. Diego appeared in the doorway carrying an enormous roll of pink unicorn wallpaper, apparently another piece he had gone back to the store to collect. He looked first at the officers, then at the bottle sealed inside an evidence bag, and finally at Renata.

The wallpaper slipped from his hands and rolled across the floor.

“What is going on?”

Julian turned toward him. “Mr. Herrera, we have evidence that someone has been deliberately giving your daughter a substance that has been making her seriously ill.”

Diego stared at Renata as though he hadn’t understood the words. When he finally spoke, his voice was almost too quiet to hear.

“Tell me you didn’t do this.”

Renata’s eyes filled with tears. “Diego, I only wanted us to have a normal family.”

He took a step backward.

“What does that have to do with my daughter being sick?”

Julian opened another folder on the desk beside him. “There’s something else we need to discuss with you. During the investigation, Laura’s name came up.”

Laura was Camila’s mother, the woman Diego had buried three years earlier.

The moment he heard her name, he stopped looking at Renata.

Suddenly, the bottle in the evidence bag no longer looked like the beginning of the story.

The Woman Who Wanted Every Place 

After the officers escorted Renata into the hallway, Diego followed and demanded to know what Laura had to do with any of this. Renata insisted that everyone was twisting the situation, but when Diego asked directly whether she had been giving Camila those drops, she could only repeat that they were supposed to be vitamins.

“You told me they were vitamins,” he said.

“I was trying to help you.”

“Help me do what?”

Renata looked at him for a long moment before saying, “You never got over Laura.”

Diego seemed genuinely stunned. “Laura died. She was my wife and Camila’s mother. What exactly did you expect me to do, pretend she never existed?”

Renata’s composure began to crack. She complained that Laura’s photographs were still in the house, that some of her belongings had remained in storage, and that Camila talked about her constantly. Each complaint seemed more astonishing than the last because the explanation was so obvious: Camila had been four years old when she lost her mother.

“I spent two years walking into that house feeling like somebody’s replacement,” Renata said.

Diego’s expression became strangely calm. “Then you should have left.”

She stared at him. “After everything I did for both of you?”

“Yes. You should have left.”

Renata began crying harder and told him that she had wanted a child of their own. Diego stood motionless for several seconds before the meaning behind those words seemed to reach him.

“Was Camila in your way?”

Renata didn’t answer.

“I’m asking you whether my seven-year-old daughter was in your way.”

Finally, she said, “As long as she was there, we were never going to feel like a real family.”

Diego closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was no anger in his face anymore; there was only the stunned expression of a man trying to understand how someone he trusted could have looked at his child and seen an obstacle.

“She’s seven years old,” he said.

The officers took Renata away while she continued calling Diego’s name, but he never followed her. After the elevator doors closed, he slowly lowered himself onto the floor beside the abandoned roll of unicorn wallpaper.

“I brought her into our house,” he said. “I gave her a key. I let her pick Camila up from school.”