Doña Tomás, 70 years old, was a wealthy peasant in a rural town in Oaxaca. He had had his first wife, Doña Rosa, who died ten years earlier, leaving him three married daughters. Despite his advanced age, Doña Tomás still dreamed of having a son who would carry on his surname and continue the family line, a wish that remained true for him.

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That’s why she decided to get married early. The chosen one was Marisol, a 20-year-old daughter of a poor family from the same town. Marisol was beautiful and fresh as spring, but poverty had hit her hard. Her parents, in need of money to settle debts and pay for their youngest son’s medical treatment, agreed to give her up in exchange for a large sum of money.
Although she didn’t want it, Marisol agreed to the marriage out of love for her family. On the eve of the wedding, with tears in her eyes, she said to her mother:
“I just hope he treats me well… I will do my duty.”

The wedding was simple but striking, because Doña Tomás wanted everyone in town to know that he was still “strong” and ready to have a child. The neighbors were grumbling and criticizing the large age difference, but he didn’t care. He was so content, excitedly preparing for the wedding night, confident that Marisol would soon be pregnant. Although resigned, she tried to appear happy to play her part.

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The wedding night arrived. Tomás, elegantly dressed, drank a little medicinal liquor that, according to him, would make him feel young again. He took Marisol’s hand and led her to the bedroom, her eyes full of anticipation. She, perversely, forced a smile, afraid of disappointing him.

The atmosphere became intimate. When Tomás spoke to her, he was suddenly surprised, his face tightened, his breathing labored. He let go of Marisol’s hand, brought the other to his chest, and fell heavily onto the bed.

—“Doп Tomás! What’s wrong with him?” —Marisol shouted, her eyes full of fear.

She tried to hold him, but his body was already rigid, soaked with odor. A shuddering moan escaped her throat.

The image of the liquor he had drunk several years earlier flashed through his mind: what he had relied on to “rejuvenate” him had become a silent corpse.

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Desperate, Marisol called for help. Doп Tomás’s daughters and other relatives broke into the room, found the mobile phone in the corner and the young bride crying, lost in the middle of the mess.

That moment was a chaos of screams, running and crying. They took Doña Tomás to the hospital, but the doctors could only confirm the worst: he had suffered a fatal heart attack due to exertion and age.

The news spread throughout the town. People, who were already worried about the unfair marriage, now spoke out even more loudly. Some felt sorry for Marisol, others mocked her:
“He didn’t even manage to give her a son… fate is just.”

Marisol remained silent, her gaze lost in thought. She remembered his words:  “I will do my duty.”  But that duty never began; it all ended with the tragedy no one had foreseen.

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After the funeral, the money she received from the wedding was enough to pay off her family’s debts and her brother’s treatment. But in return, Marisol was burdened with a cruel fate: to be married at twenty, forever marked as “Doña Tomás’s second wife.”

The wedding night, which was supposed to be the beginning of the commitment full of pressures and expectations, ended up becoming the  last night of a man’s life … and the beginning of the heavy cross that the young man would have to carry for the rest of his days.