He cupped her cheek, held her even tighter as he spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She closed her eyes, tried to speak, but no words came. She hung her head and clung to him until her eyes stung and she felt spent. Arturo’s hand trailed down her hair, brushing it with gentle fingers, and then at last she moved away from him, feeling embarrassed at both her wild display of feelings and the press of his body against her own.
“Mother must be needing me in the kitchen by now,” she said, quickly rubbing at her eyes, which were still bright with tears.
Arturo’s eyes were bright too, though not with tears. A mysterious light illuminated them, fueled by a strong emotion that she could not pinpoint. He looked down and nodded. When he glanced up at her again his gaze was distant, concealing his thoughts.
Alba helped devein chiles in the kitchen, her hands clumsy and her work slow. Afterward, she spent the rest of the day with the children, watching them play in silence. Dinner was a quiet affair, and once she’d made sure all her siblings were settled in bed, she proceeded to slip into her nightgown and began brushing her hair.
The motion of the bristles reminded her of Arturo’s hands as they’d trailed against her hair. The oil lamp on the table burned bright, returning her reflection in the oval mirror. She set the brush down, one hand against the necklace he’d given her, which she made a habit of wearing. She undid the clasp and placed the necklace back in the wooden jewelry box.
Now her fingers trailed against the neckline of her nightgown as she leaned forward and looked at her reflection, fancying that the glow of the oil lamp made her look like a Baroque painting. She wondered, if Arturo were to see her like this, whether he might agree with her assessment.
Alba recalled that he likely had a lover in the city, a woman who rouged her lips and cheeks. She smiled, thinking that the womanin the oval mirror looked more like a courtesan than a country girl. That the woman was not Alba but someone else, and that this someone else knew the taste of champagne and the softness of exquisite furs and all the wonderful things that Arturo talked about. On other nights she had imagined similar things, imagined herself walking in the company of her handsome uncle to the opera, decked in jewels. His letters, filled with information about the big city and its wonders, inflamed her imagination. But now these fantasies seemed altered, rendered in a different hue.
She remembered the pressure of his arms around her, the feel of his navy suit under her fingertips. Did he hold his secret lover like that, or closer yet?
She quickly lowered her eyes and looked at her hands, blushing and thinking it was wicked to even begin to imagine that.
A long, shrill whine made Alba turn her head and drop her brush with a gasp. She sat still and waited until she heard it again, then she stood up and moved to the window, trying to peer into the darkness. Was it a coyote? A dog? She could see nothing.
Alba fetched the oil lamp and opened the window, leaning out and breathing in the fresh night air. She held the lamp up and squinted. The whine came again, this time hoarser, lower, coming from somewhere below her window, and Alba looked down. There was a scuttering and she thought something darted between some bushes.
The noise repeated itself; this time she thought it wasn’t in the bushes but that it drifted from the branches of one of the peppercorn trees to the right of the window, though she was certain no animal could have climbed so quickly up its trunk.
It shrieked once again. When barn owls cried out, they might sound like a gasping person, and sometimes like a screaming one. But she knew that cry and this was a different sound, something she’d never heard before, even though she recognized the noises of many animals, living as she did in the countryside. Yet it was not an owl of any type, not a dog, not a person, but perhaps all three. It was a whine and a growl and a yelp, thick and rough.
Dread whipped her body, making her mouth go dry, and shestood with her hand trembling by the window, her eyes fixed on the outline of the tree, which was a smudge of gray. The oil lamp did little to illuminate it, and she could not tell what crouched there in the darkness.
She was sure that the creature that had cried out was still there and she waited, holding her breath, for its luminous eyes to glare at her.
The wind stirred the branches of the peppercorn tree. She hastily shut the window and turned her head away, extinguishing the lamp. She feared that the creature in the tree might look into her room and wished that it would scurry away.
Hurriedly, she closed the curtains and placed the oil lamp back on the table, saying her nightly prayers as she walked around the bed. She forgot what she was saying and had to start over again.
The cry did not repeat itself as Alba lowered herself under the bedsheets. By the morning, she’d forgotten about the animal outside the house, until Jacobo came rushing into the dining room as they were breakfasting. He whispered into her mother’s ear and Luisa stood up quickly, excusing herself.
Alba followed them outside. Jacobo and her mother headed into the stables, and Alba slowed her pace the closer she moved to the building. The dread was bubbling up again, gathering in the pit of her stomach and then coating her throat.
She stared at one of the stalls, where Tadeo’s horse lay on the ground, dead, its eyes open as a fly crawled upon its eyelashes.
1998: 5
It was Noah whogreeted Minerva upon her second visit to the Willows. He was neatly dressed—even overdressed—in slacks, a shirt, a vest, and a herringbone jacket with broad shoulders. He looked alert, quite different from the drunk frat boy or the sleepy young man in a dirty sweatshirt she’d met on previous occasions.
“Are you going out?” she asked.
“No. Why?”
“The clothes.”
“Carolyn thought I should look proper today, since we have you over.”
He guided her to the library. The journal for 1934 and the manuscript had been set upon the table, ready for her to continue her work. She began by taking out her notebook and pen. Noah hovered on the other side of the table, watching her. Minerva wondered if he would stay the whole time she was scheduled to use this room, guarding its contents.
“Why are you interested in Beatrice Tremblay?” he asked. “She wasn’t a famous writer.”
“Precisely because she wasn’t famous. It means nobody has written the definitive account of her life.”
