DANIEL KNELT DOWN in front of the headstone and left the flowers next to it. He stroked the letters engraved on the stone:
ISABELLA SEMPERE
1917–1939
He remained there with his eyes closed until Julián started to babble in that incomprehensible tone he adopted when he had something on his mind.
“What’s the matter, Julián?”
His son was pointing at something at the foot of the headstone. A small figure peeped through the petals of some dried flowers in the shadow of a glass vase. It looked like a plaster statuette. Daniel was quite sure it hadn’t been there the last time he’d visited his mother’s grave. He picked it up and examined it. An angel.
Julián, who was staring at the figurine with fascination, leaned over and tried to snatch it. When he did so, the angel slipped, fell on the marble, and broke. It was then that Daniel noticed something sticking out from one of the two halves: a piece of rolled-up paper. He set Julián down and picked up the angel figure. When he unrolled the paper, he recognized Alicia Gris’s handwriting:
Mauricio Valls
El Pinar
Calle Manuel Arnús
Barcelona
Julián was looking at Daniel attentively. Daniel kept the piece of paper in his pocket and gave the boy a smile that didn’t seem to convince him. He was observing his father the way he did when he had a fever and lay on the sofa. Daniel left a white rose on the gravestone and picked his son up again.
Bea was waiting for them at the foot of the little hill. When he was by her side, Daniel hugged her without saying a word. He wanted to beg her forgiveness for what had happened that morning and for everything else, but couldn’t find the words.
Bea’s eyes found his. “Are you all right, Daniel?”
He hid behind that smile that hadn’t convinced Julián, and convinced Bea even less. “I love you,” he said.
That night, after putting Julián to bed, they made love slowly in the half-light. Daniel passed his lips over her body as if he feared it was the last time he’d be able to do so. Then, as they lay in each other’s arms, under the blankets, Bea whispered in his ear: “I’d like to have another child. A girl. Would you like that?”
Daniel nodded and kissed her forehead. He went on caressing her until Bea fell asleep. Then he waited for her breathing to turn slow and heavy. He got up quietly, gathered his clothes, and put them on in the dining room. Before leaving, he stopped in front of Julián’s bedroom and opened the door a fraction. His son was sleeping peacefully, hugging a cuddly crocodile Fermín had given him, which was twice his size. Julián had christened it “Carlitos”, and there was no way he would go to sleep without it, despite all Bea’s attempts to substitute it for something more manageable.
Daniel resisted the temptation to go into the bedroom and kiss his son. Julián was a light sleeper and had a particularly sensitive radar for his parents’ movements around the house. When he closed the door of the apartment, he wondered whether he would ever see him again.