Julia has been gone for thirteen years. The police file has long since gathered dust, and no matter how many times we’ve tried to reopen the case, there’s no evidence to go on.
Our parents were killed, the house burned down, and our sister disappeared off the face of the earth. And nobody knows anything.
I keep my fingers laced together, trying not to look at Lupe.
I know what this subject does to her. She’s never said it out loud, but I see the guilt in her eyes every time we bring it up.
She still blames herself for asking Julia to return to that house to help our parents.
“I don’t know,” she answers quietly, and I just nod.
Even though neither of us is responsible for what happened that night, the guilt that we couldn’t do more still eats at us both.
“I could try to get into the police database,” I tell her quietly. “See what suspects they had, and maybe...”
“Amalia, have you lost your mind?”
“The police gave up too easily, Lupe, and you know it. Maybe if we had more leads...”
“It’s too dangerous,hermanita. Those people buried the case, destroyed our family, took Julia, and nobody did a thing about it. If the justice system couldn’t touch them, we don’t stand a chance.”
I know she’s right. I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m not doing enough. That I could have tried harder with the new technical skills I’ve built up.
We close the subject and spend the rest of our time together talking about everything and nothing — her exams, what new plantstíoFelipe has started potting around the house, an energy bill that needs to be paid soon.
I wish we had more time, but the break ends and we both go back to our usual routines. I head toward the library, where I can find enough quiet to finish the projects I still have pending.
The university has one of the largest libraries in the city, spread across two floors and covering everything from architecture to aerospace materials. It’s the perfect place to disappear for a few hours. Not that anyone would be looking for me. It’s more the comfort of it, the silence, the warm lamplight, the smell of old paper that settles over me the moment I walk in.
I finish jotting down the last ideas for the weather forecasting algorithm I’m working on when my thoughts drift back to Lupe.I don’t like Alek, and if I want any peace of mind, I need more information.
I try to remember exactly what Lupe said his name was. And so I find myself typingRastovskiinto the search engine.
A few photos come up, but they’re not of Alek, they’re of an older man at several events in Moscow.
The family apparently owns a sprawling range of businesses, from petroleum to real estate to gambling, but what frustrates me is that there’s nothing beyond the surface level.
Alek’s name appears in exactly one article, in which his uncle Ivan mentions that he’ll be overseeing a company expansion into the United States.
Then I feel it. Like a shift in the air, the way a room changes when someone walks into it with enough presence to rearrange the atmosphere. My laptop is shut in an instant, my eyes dropping back to my notebook like it’s been there the whole time.
A second later, the scent reaches me. Soap, mint, and something fresh, citrusy, unmistakable in the still air of the library.
Of course it’s him.
“What gave me away?” he asks, and my skin breaks out in goosebumps because his voice is low and unhurried and it works on my nerves like a charm.
If I were being honest, I’d tell him that between these walls it’s impossible not to feel him when he moves toward you. He has a gravity that draws people to him, the kind that makes a room feel too small, too tight to contain him.
But my mind picks up the signal and answers before my mouth can do something foolish.
“My notes on Thales’s theorem began trembling before I even turned around. So, good entrance.”
I can’t see him, but I know he’s smiling right now, and my heart has doubled its pace.
“Thales has always struck me as overrated,” he answers, and now I’m the one who can’t hide her smile.
There’s a comfort in his presence I haven’t felt with anyone else, and that’s a bad sign, because he’s my professor. Because I don’t need to get tangled up in a scandal involving him, but I can’t stop myself from responding. He’s the only person, I think, in whose company I’d let myself make these nerdy jokes, because he actually gets them. Because he doesn’t make me feel like a weirdo for saying them.
