The Trial
Chapter 15 - The Trial
The trial began in the rainy season.
Every morning, the courthouse steps shone wet under gray skies, and reporters gathered beneath umbrellas, waiting for my mother’s face, my brother’s temper, my son’s name.
Mateo stayed far from it.
I carried Lucía’s notebook instead.
Mercedes’s defense argued tragedy.
Esteban’s defense argued accident.
Salazar’s defense argued confusion.
All three argued grief had made everyone behave imperfectly.
Marisol called that “a crowd of arsonists blaming smoke.”
The prosecution began with Lucía alive.
Not dead.
Alive.
Her recordings. Her notes. Her financial findings. Her letter. Her joke about not being called fragile. Her voice filled the courtroom before any photograph of her body did.
That mattered.
They could not reduce her to a coffin after hearing her laugh at my mother.
Inés testified on day three.
Mercedes watched her with cold eyes.
Inés shook, but she spoke.
She described the nursery argument, the shove, the fall, the delayed ambulance, the baby’s cry, the button, the threat.
Duarte tried to undermine her.
“You continued working for the Mendoza family after this alleged event.”
Inés looked at him.
“I was poor before I was brave.”
The courtroom went silent.
Even the judge paused.
Duarte changed direction.
Paloma testified about the bracelet.
Sister Beatriz testified about Niño Azul and my mother’s calls.
Valeria testified with the controlled fury of a doctor whose friend had been turned into paperwork after death. She dismantled Salazar’s medical claims line by line until he looked physically smaller.
Then the button came.
The prosecutor held it up in an evidence bag.
A small navy button.
A thing any tailor could replace.
A thing Lucía had turned into a verdict.
Forensic evidence linked fibers to Esteban’s jacket and blood traces to Lucía and Esteban. Nail scrapings confirmed Esteban’s skin beneath Lucía’s nails. The scratch on his neck appeared in photographs from the wake.
Esteban stared at the table.
Mercedes stared at me.
When I testified, Duarte asked whether I had reason to resent my family before Lucía’s death.
“Yes,” I said.
He seemed pleased.
“Because of business disagreements?”
“Because my wife was right about them.”
The judge instructed me to answer only the question.
I apologized.
Not very convincingly.
Duarte asked, “Is it true you were absent from your wife’s final weeks?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible guilt has colored your interpretation of events?”
“Yes.”
A murmur.
I continued before he could smile.
“That is why Lucía left documents.”
Marisol lowered her head to hide her expression.
Duarte moved on.
Mercedes testified last.
She should not have.
But pride makes poor legal counsel sound optional.
She spoke of family honor, of Lucía’s disrespect, of Esteban’s stress, of my softness, of the vineyards needing discipline. She admitted delaying the ambulance because she believed “panic would damage the family name.”
The prosecutor asked, “Did the delay damage Lucía?”
Mercedes answered, “Lucía was already determined to destroy us.”
The courtroom heard it.
Not sadness.
Motive.
Esteban took a plea before closing arguments finished.
He admitted assault leading to fatal complications, obstruction, and conspiracy. He testified against Mercedes and Salazar in exchange for reduced exposure, though still facing years in prison.
He cried on the stand.
Not for Lucía.
For himself.
When the verdict came, I held Valeria’s hand because I could not hold Lucía’s.
Mercedes was convicted on conspiracy, obstruction, custodial interference, attempted kidnapping, falsification-related charges, and culpability tied to delayed medical intervention. Salazar was convicted. Esteban’s plea was accepted. San Telmo’s representative faced separate financial charges.
No verdict returned my wife.
No sentence could equal Mateo’s first hours stolen under a false name.
But when the judge read that Lucía Herrera Mendoza had died after preventable delay and unlawful concealment, I felt something shift.
The official record no longer belonged to my mother.
Outside, reporters shouted again.
This time, I said nothing.
Inés did.
She stood beside Marisol, small and shaking and brave.
“She was a woman,” Inés said. “Not a scandal.”
May you like
Then she walked away.
It was the best statement of the trial.
