50
Beatriz watched as the sun rose on the house among the tulips and knew it would be the last time she would see the dawn. The last. No postscript... the last of them all.
From the heights, she spied on her daughter, feeling a sense of nostalgia as she recognized Martin”s features in her daughter.
Sitting on the steps in front of the main door, Vesna twirled a pink dahlia between two fingers, spherical and perfect like the life she had never had.
Unaware that she was no longer alone, Vesna let out a choked whimper. She had traveled thousands of miles in two days, but she had arrived too late. Drago Krivec, also known as Martin Br?ljan, had died the night before in the ICU of the Clinical Hospital in Ljubljana, taking to his grave the farewell message she had so longed to hear.
“Did I come at a bad time?” Beatriz whispered, materializing next to Vesna.
Her daughter shook her head and wiped her face with her sleeve, pretending to scratch her eye.
“No. Sit down,” she said, pushing her bag aside to make room for Beatriz.
“What about your friend?” asked her mother, taking a seat, “Didn”t he come with you?”
“He got a call from work. He”s gone to find a coffee shop to write a couple of urgent emails.”
They both remained silent. Vesna got up and began to pluck dry leaves from the flowerbeds that adorned the terrace.
“I”m sorry you didn”t make it in time,” her mother murmured, following her noiselessly. She would have liked to caress Vesna’s face, but her hands went through everything just like the wind. “It must be hard to lose your father again.”
“The second time is worse, oddly enough.”
“Do you want to talk about the first one?” offered Beatriz, checking that no one was around.
Vesna nodded, giving her a rueful smile.
“Of course. That”s why you came, isn”t it?”
Beatriz looked through the windows of the house, almost opaque due to the accumulated dirt, and imagined what Martin”s life would have been like in that humble country dwelling. Better than hers? Possibly. Better than with her? Absolutely. She sighed, letting the memories transport her back to that fateful month of February 1993.
“When Andreu died, your father was supposedly in Seville, so no one connected him to the accident. He had no family other than the two of us. Your grandmother, Carmen, was consumed by dementia and could barely remember her own name. Martin lived for work and hardly had any friends apart from Andreu, so no one missed him. It was very easy to explain to his employees that he’d had an accident hundreds of miles from home in the south. He slipped in the bathroom. A blow to the head. The few who were interested commented on the curious and predestined friendship between Andreu and Martin. Two friends, united by misfortune and both dead in the same week... and all because of the same woman, although nobody knew that, of course.
The most difficult thing was to close La Hiedra, although I managed to do it by forging a few signatures. It only took a couple of months. Of course, I never tried to convince the authorities that Martin was dead. But I didn”t need to. I just wanted him to suffer for taking away the man I loved... at least at first.”
Vesna narrowed her eyes, clearly hurt. Then she frowned. She stepped off the porch and into the backyard, which had become overgrown with weeds during the gardener”s last years.
“I remember you had an urn with ashes in it,” Vesna muttered thoughtfully. “Whose ashes were they, then? Were they Andreu”s?”
Beatriz let out a bitter laugh.
“No. Not at all. Do you remember the day I burned all the photos? I put the remains of the photographs in the urn, and I also emptied a couple of ashtrays into it, too.”
Vesna took a deep breath as if gathering her patience, but, for the first time, she didn’t reproach Beatriz for her terrible behavior. She merely observed her, inviting her to continue.
“My plan took effect, and for the people around us, I became Martin Br?ljan”s widow. I missed only one detail in my perfect plan, and that detail was myself... and my conscience. In time, I understood the magnitude of what I had done.” Beatriz paused, feeling the clutches of guilt squeezing her insides again. “But by then, it was too late. I had lied too much, and there was no turning back. Without Andreu by my side, I sought solace in drink. It was the only thing that gave me back my peace and allowed me to forget my sins. I know I was a horrible mother to you, and today, I regret not having acted differently. I’m not proud of my actions... I need to tell you how sorry I am.”
Vesna looked her straight in the eye and nodded. There was no emotion on her face.
Just then, the phone rang, breaking the magic of the moment. Vesna picked it up and talked to someone for a couple of minutes.
“That was Max,” she said as she finished. “He’s just quit his job. He”s on his way back.”
“I”m happy for him.”
Vesna swallowed, putting her cell phone back in her purse.
“So that”s it,” she said in a quiet voice, “Is that where your story ends?”
Beatriz sat on a rusty swing and rocked longingly, comforted by its squeaks. No, that wasn”t all. The part Vesna would be most interested in was missing. The key piece she had kept from her to keep her interest—the one she had saved for the day of their farewell.
“Martin and I talked one more time,” Beatriz murmured, running her fingers through the swing chains. “He called me a year later. That day, I should have confessed my whole charade to him, but I lacked the courage to do so.”
“What did he want?”
“He gave me a post office box and asked me to send him something. A family heirloom he had left behind when he had fled.
Vesna”s eyes lit up, and Beatriz smiled, seeing that she understood.
“Exactly.”
“Don”t tell me that...”
“I sent it to him, and after that, he never contacted me again. I didn”t ever imagine the value of that dusty, rickety piece of junk... if I had known, I would have sold it immediately, of course.”
“So, that means that...”
Beatriz pointed to the house just behind them.
“It”s there. On the other side of that door.”
Vesna ran onto the porch and climbed the steps two at a time. Watching her, Beatriz was transported back to those distant Christmas mornings in the nineties when they were still a family, and her little girl hurried down the hallway in search of her presents.
“The key is under the mat,” she shouted from the garden.
Vesna bent down to pick it up, and Beatriz floated to her side. She watched as Vesna lifted a small silver key and fitted it into the lock. She began to turn it but then hesitated. She pulled it out of the lock again, looking afraid.
“I don”t know,” she muttered. “I don”t know if I should go in.”
“You can open it, Vesna,” Beatriz whispered, peeking from behind her shoulder. “This is your house now.”