Chapter 16

Malena wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She would not get caught sneaking into the courtyard again. She would wait until Javier returned home before leaving Claudia’s room. But the wait was excruciating. It was already midnight and he wasn’t back yet. Her exhausted body relaxed under the covers and her eyelids closed every few seconds, comforted by the sound of Claudia’s soft snores. Did Javier have to go out every night? Couldn’t he ever spend an evening at home? If only he had a more predictable schedule, she could have been to the courtyard and back already.

As she drifted into sleep, something woke her. Was that the front door? She stiffened under the covers, listening to the noises in the hall: someone whistling and juggling keys, the floor squeaking under heavy steps, and finally, a door shutting.

Once the house was silent, Malena stepped out of Claudia’s room with only a candle in her hand. She tiptoed down the stairs and into the dining room, the piece of paper in her brassiere brushing against her skin. That little piece of paper, so close to her heart, was the answer to a question that had been pounding in her head for the past few days.

She stopped in the kitchen to pick up a large wooden spoon from a drawer, then slipped outside. It was cold and the pavement felt rough under her bare feet. She knelt by the lemon tree. The soil was harder than she remembered; digging with the spoon wasn’t easy. She set the candle on the ground so she could use both hands and dug deeper, looking around the patio every so often to make sure nobody was around, not that it did much good—as dark as it was. She had no idea what she would say if someone found her out here. The sleepwalking trick probably wouldn’t work this time. Worse yet, the black plastic bag was nowhere to be seen. What if someone had found the accounting notebooks and thrown them away?

She scooped with her hands, frantically, almost in a panic, until she felt the plastic bag with her fingers. She pulled it out, tore it open, and took one of the accounting notebooks out. She moved the candle closer to her leg and removed the piece of paper from her brassiere—her father’s goodbye note, the last memory of him—and compared the handwriting with the script in the book.

It was identical. The same left slant, the oversized capital letters, the same curly tail at the end of the s, the tilted line crossing his t’s.

On the bottom of the page was the accountant’s signature: Enrique Hidalgo. Again, the accountant’s signature matched her father’s writing. Was it possible that this man, this Enrique Hidalgo, was her father? She knew he’d been an accountant before becoming a math teacher. But why would he change his name?

She examined the date at the bottom of the page. November 10, 1941, the year prior to her birth. No, this couldn’t be a coincidence. The writing, the timing, the profession, it all coincided, and besides, nobody ever mentioned Hugo Sevilla. Trinidad hadn’t even heard the name before.

Enrique Hidalgo must be her father.

The paper trembled in her hands, her fingers numb. Her father had lied about this, too. She hadn’t even known his real name. She read his note, the last words he had written to her.

Dearest Malena,

I know I was never the father you deserved. I hope one day you’ll forgive me for that and for what I’m about to do. I just can’t run away anymore.

I’ve always loved you.

Papá

Nothing about his deceit, about his lies. She crumpled his note and would have dumped it in the trash if she had one nearby, or if she had the certainty that nobody would find it. Instead, she returned it to her brassiere, fighting her tears. Her entire life was a farce, from beginning to end. Worse yet, she wasn’t any better than him. Wasn’t she doing the same thing?

Mechanically, she removed another notebook from the bag and leafed through it. The same names and the same writing repeated throughout. Enrique Hidalgo had to be him. She tried to remember what her grandmother had called him when Malena was little, but “hijo” or “your father” were the only terms she recalled.

She returned both notebooks to the plastic bag, and her fingers brushed against a soft fabric. Ana’s handkerchief. She pulled it out of the bag, remembering now Rafael’s accusations, remembering now the initial sewn on it. Yes, it was the letter E, as in Enrique, as in her father’s real name.

Before she could draw any conclusions, before she could grasp the full meaning of her discovery, she caught a glimpse of a dim light coming from one of the upstairs rooms. She couldn’t tell whose room it was, afraid as she was to turn her head toward the source of light. She froze, like a rabbit waiting for its predator to act first.

With her peripheral vision, she discerned a figure standing behind the curtain, probably watching her, discovering her. Her instinct told her to blow out the candle, to run back into the house, to hide, but her body was paralyzed. If she remained still, she hoped, maybe she would become invisible. Seconds passed until she could no longer hold her curiosity. Her need to know was a force stronger than her good sense. She turned her head toward the window, but the figure—if there had truly been one—was gone. The gauzy curtain stirred gently in the night breeze. A second or two later, the light went out and the house turned completely dark again.