Chapter 23
When they reached the house, Inés couldn’t help herself and rushed to the gate. The car was gone. She stood there, staring at the spot where it was normally parked, until her aunt turned the key and pulled the gate open.
They walked inside. The house seemed unnaturally quiet.
Everyone was out on a Sunday, but the silence was thicker, as if the building recognized his departure.
Though she could not be sure he had really left.
He might have been bluffing. He might have changed his mind and decided that he’d take pictures, as he said.
She couldn’t be sure unless she checked his room.
Her aunt removed her gloves and handed them to Inés. “I’ll be in my room. I’d like you to bring me a glass of sherry.”
“Isn’t it a bit early for sherry?”
“Bring it.”
Perla headed up the stairs and Inés wandered into the kitchen. She found the bottle and a glass, poured the contents into it, and then looked for the serving tray. When she walked by Ulises’s door, she saw it was open a crack, and she nudged it with her foot and slipped inside.
His luggage was gone. She put the tray aside and sat on the unmade bed, letting his absence wash over her body.
Something wild and wicked had grown between them, thrilling her.
It had changed the colors of the house, making them brighter and bolder, giving life to a world that was tinged with decay.
A mysterious alchemy had turned them intrepid when they were together; it had sharpened dreams and desires where before they had been out-of-focus images in her mind.
Now he was gone.
She jumped to her feet, grabbed the tray, and went to her aunt’s room. Perla was sitting at her desk, with the imposing portrait of Don Osorio Inclán above it. Inés placed the tray down.
“Do you need anything else, Aunt Perla?” she asked tiredly, wishing to retire to her room.
Perla stretched out a hand and took the glass, giving it a sip. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Her aunt was peering at a piece of paper. Finally, she gave her drink another sip, set it down upon the desk, and turned around to look at her.
“I always told you that if you were patient and obeyed our family’s rules, you’d be rewarded one day. And I thought that despite your many shortcomings, you had a modicum of common sense.”
“Have I done something wrong, aunt?”
“You’ve done plenty.”
Their eyes met.
She knows, Inés thought. The tension in Perla’s lips, the look on her face, they told a story. She felt terror, and her instinct was to immediately deny any wrongdoing. But she did not speak. Inés was silent, clamping her mouth shut.
“The boxes Fito brought had important papers. There was also a letter, addressed to me. Can you guess what the letter said?”
Inés did not reply. There was no point, and anyway her aunt did not give her time to open her mouth; immediately she held the letter up and began to read from it.
“ ‘In conclusion, it is my opinion that your husband is not who he says he is. That he is a fraudster who is determined to steal your money, and that he has arranged to achieve this feat with the assistance of your niece. They are in a relationship, as I’ve witnessed with my own eyes. Your eternal friend, Cándido.’ ”
Perla folded the piece of paper and placed it gingerly upon the desk.
“I have raised you, and this is how you repay me? I have given you food, shelter, clothing, everything you ever wanted. You ungrateful, dirty girl.”
“Everything?” Inés scoffed, her tongue loosening. “You gave me as little as you could. As little love, and as little attention, and as little respect—”
“You were a stain on our name. A bastard girl, and still I took you in.”
“Only to remind me every single day of my life about that shame, yes. How mortified you felt by my existence. And you hid things from me constantly. My father’s letters, for example,” she said, pointing at the desk behind Perla.
Perla laughed dryly. “I should have known you were riffling through my things.”
“You had no right to keep them from me. Locked up in there, like a sick trophy of yours.”
“Your father was a cad. I kept you safe from his bad influence. Not that I could prevent you from going down a dark path anyway.”
“You must be pleased about my path, Aunt Perla. You always wanted me to be a bad seed, didn’t you?
You and Grandfather and Grandmother, you couldn’t imagine anything else for me.
I had to be bad and dirty. You got your wish.
I am bad. You used me, and you shamed me.
Constantly. When you kicked Salvador out, you wouldn’t let me go with him, but you told everyone who would listen that I was a whore.
Here I am, Aunt Perla: your niece, the whore, and your precious husband is nothing but a lowly thief.
“He writes to women, you know? Women looking for pen pals and romance in magazines. He writes to them, then he fleeces the fools. He’s no hidalgo from La Rioja. He’s another kind of whore.”
Her aunt let out a sound that was close to a snarl, a wild agglomeration of syllables, a curse that was not a word. Inés did not know what angered Perla more: the thought of her fucking Ulises, or the idea that the refined gentleman was a louse.
Perla rose, grabbing Inés by the arm, digging her nails into her flesh. “You’re a covetous, poisonous snake!”
“Let go of me!”
“Always with that sly look on your face, plotting behind my back.”
She wrenched herself free from her aunt’s grasp but immediately felt the sting of a slap on her cheek. Both women stared at each other.
“You’re exactly like your mother. Traitors! Vipers! Don’t you think I’ll forget this. You’re a nasty leech, a parasite—”
“I’m leaving,” Inés said, cutting her off, and when she spoke it was as if invisible shackles slipped from her wrists.
She’d existed in a state of paralysis for years, but now she shook herself awake. It was over. Although she’d spent many days dreading discovery and punishment, she suddenly felt a wave of relief. Her life in this house had reached an end.
Her aunt laughed. “That’s what you said when Salvador went away. Now Ulises has gone away too, and you’re not going with him either.”
“How do you know he’s gone?”
“I’m not as stupid as you think. He didn’t borrow my car, he’s gone, forever. Good riddance, then. It’ll be easier to get a divorce.”
“I’m leaving anyway. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was too afraid. I’m not afraid now.”
She meant it. Why should she ever be afraid? She’d plotted and she’d killed. She’d gotten away with it too. Inés laughed.
Wrath made Perla’s lips tremble. “You can’t!”
The yelling and quarreling had attracted the attention of the dog, which began to bark excitedly and scratch at the door.
Inés had no desire to argue any longer. She shook her head and moved toward the door. Perla raised her voice, and there was panic in her face, a dreadful, naked terror in her eyes that drowned the rage that had simmered there.
“You can’t leave me alone!”
Those words. They flung Inés back in time, and the awful nightmare that made her cry in her sleep played before her open eyes as she stared at her aunt.
The words Perla had spoken echoed those that had been spoken many years before.
She remembered, with startling clarity, that moment when she had stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked up.
Inés spoke slowly, as if she were still half asleep, as if the dream slackened her tongue. “You were fighting. That day with my mother, you were fighting.”
Perla stepped away from Inés. “What are you saying?”
“By the stairs,” Inés continued; her tongue was still sluggish, straining to make the proper sounds. “You pushed her.”
Her aunt’s face turned into a death mask; it was made of stone. Only her eyes seemed to glimmer with a sickening animation as she stared at Inés.
Perla began to shake her head. “I didn’t.”
“I saw it. That day, I saw it. You pushed her down the stairs.”
“You didn’t see anything.”
“Then you hugged me. You murdered her and you hugged me.”
Perla had crept back toward the desk, as if she might find solace under the shadow of her father’s portrait. She shook her head again. “I will not have you telling lies in my house.”
It had returned to her, the whole of it, and once she had remembered, once she had seen, she could not unsee. The sound of her mother’s body crashing to the floor rang in her ears and her eyes were filled with crimson. She felt faint and her voice, when she spoke, was the weakest of whispers.
“But you did it,” she said.
Her aunt’s eyes were now so wide and bleak that Inés shrank in fear, mesmerized, chained to her spot.
Yet she also felt the immediate need to escape that room, and so she forced herself to move forward, toward the door.
Before she could reach it, Perla opened a drawer and took out a gun, pointing it at her.
“Don’t,” Perla said.
Inés froze in place. She swallowed. “I need to go, Aunt Perla.”
“No. You’re not going anywhere.”
“I won’t tell,” she promised.
Perla’s hand was firm upon the gun as she drifted closer to her. “You’re a liar.”
“I swear.”
“Don’t move. I told you, you’re not going anywhere!”
She stood still. The distance between them was short, and even if Perla did not have much experience with a pistol, Inés suspected she’d be able to shoot her with ease, so she was afraid to step closer to the door and incite her wrath in that way. They stared at each other.
The dog continued to bark, and now came a loud voice.
“Inés!” Ulises yelled.
His voice was like a cannon, startling Perla, and in that split second of surprise Inés made her choice and flung herself against her aunt, hitting her with a punishing blow that sent her reeling back.
Perla screamed in pain, but she held on to the gun, and even though Inés tried to wrench it out of her hands, her grip was iron. In a fury she struck Inés, struck her face, and Inés held her hand as tight as she could. She knew that if she let go of the gun she was dead.