By week’s end, Valerie’s voice was peppered with half-remembered details of her false past. She told the neighbor about the “little school” she’d had to drop out of at twelve. She recounted how she once cleaned tables at a diner before being fired for lacking papers.
Diego stared at her, horrified. These weren’t just lies Chase had told her to repeat—they were memories, spoken with the conviction of lived experience. She smiled wistfully as she spoke, her fingers brushing the cheap bracelet Chase had given her, as though she’d earned every bauble through years of pain.
That night, Diego lashed out. “He’s making you into his puppet! Can’t you see it?”
Valerie’s face hardened. She didn’t cry. She didn’t plead with him to understand. She scolded him, sharp and unyielding:
“No hables así de mi patrón. Tú no entiendes el sacrificio. Tú no sabes cómo sufrimos en México. Él nos salvó. Sin él… todavía estaríamos en la calle, o peor. ¡Agradece que tienes techo, comida, escuela!”
<Don't talk like that about my boss. You don't understand the sacrifice. You don't know how we suffered in Mexico. He saved us. Without him… we'd still be homeless, or worse. Be thankful you have a roof over your head, food, and school!>
Her voice cracked with anger, but not the kind a mother uses to discipline a child she loves. It was the anger of someone defending her master against insult.
Diego felt the ground slide under him. “Mom, you didn’t—none of that happened! We lived in—”
But she cut him off, pressing her hand to her chest, eyes glassy with the weight of a memory Chase had planted. “Don’t you dare say it didn’t happen. I remember. I remember every hunger pang, every night praying to the Virgin. Don’t you take that from me, Diego.”
It was like she was clinging to the suffering, treasuring it as proof of Chase’s salvation.
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