—He knows you weren't pure.
By that afternoon, the whole town knew what Adrian had said.
He told everyone that I had deceived him. He said that I had entered his family hiding a secret and that he couldn't remain married to a woman who had lied about her past.
People whispered my name as if it were a curse.
The women stopped talking when I walked by. The men looked at me with disdain. The mothers pulled their daughters away from me, as if shame could be transmitted through contact.
They said he had humiliated Adrian's family.
They said no respectable man would ever love me again.
Even my parents looked at me as if I had destroyed them.
When they came to take me back home, my mother didn't hug me.
My father did not defend me.
"You've ruined our family name," he said.
I wanted to shout the truth.
I wanted to tell you that I was just a child when an older man, someone our family trusted, hurt me.
I had not chosen what happened.
I hadn't even understood what was happening.
And none of that was my fault.
