Nothing clean happens when someone tells you that your pregnant wife won’t be coming home.
Ana Clara and Marcos had met eight years earlier in a bank line in São Paulo. She laughed easily, but not with just anyone. He said he fell in love when he saw her defend an elderly woman who had lost her place.
They married without a big party, with a simple meal and a table full of relatives who offered too many opinions. Ana Clara was the kind of woman who kept receipts, ultrasounds, medical notes, and greeting cards as if each piece of paper could save a memory from oblivion.
That’s why the blue folder existed. Inside were Miguel’s ultrasound scans, the results of his last obstetric appointment, the name of the Hospital das Clínicas written on a sheet of paper, and a list of things that still needed to be bought before the birth.
