Epilogue

Catalina

She wakes in deep darkness. And knows he’s alive. In pain but alive. And on his way home. Knows these things without knowing how she knows.

Her open windows show no stars and the earlier sliver of moon has long since set. A light wind rustles the palm fronds and ebony leaves. As always in this dark hour she can smell the river on its way to the sea. And smells too the coming rain. It did not rain as predicted last night, or today, but she can smell it on the air now and knows it is nearing swiftly. A relief from the swelter of recent days.

Ah, the days. They come and they come until they no longer do, but for some uncommon few such as herself they have come beyond all equitable allotment. She once told the boy that if he lived long enough he would find the years passing more swiftly than he could believe. He had smiled at her with youth’s amused condescension toward the old. In her own childhood—so distant now it seems a myth—she no doubt showed the same smile when her Grandmother Gloria alleged that each year was now nothing more than Friday and Christmas.

She slips her hand under the pillow to feel the comfort of the bone-handled Apache knife with which at sixteen she killed two men and which in her will she has bequeathed to the boy. The weapon was a gift from her great-grandfather Edward Little on the celebration of her quinceañera. He whom she called Buelito. Who taught her much about the turns of the world and who loved no one but her just as she loved none other than him. Until this one named after them both and who from the moment she first saw him as a babe has reminded her of Buelito. Who can say why these things are?

She rises and puts on her robe and goes to a chair by a window and sits looking out into the darkness. Then the first drops are ticking into the trees and she breathes deep the earthy aroma of the closing rain.