Page 16 of The Lion in the Library

“You’re very organized,” she said.

“Sixteen years of professional sport,” I said. “I have contingency towels for everything.”

She laughed, wrapping it around her shoulders, and sat on the blanket beside me while the children continued the castle’s fortification. The afternoon was warm and unhurried. She told me about a telenovela she’d filmed years ago, near a coast like this, a storyline so dramatic that the cast had started calling each other by their character names off-set. She was funny about it — self-aware and quick, with an impressionist’s instinct for the telling detail.

“Why acting?” I asked, when she paused. “Originally.”

She considered this. “Because I could be anyone,” she said. “Where I grew up, you were who your family was, what your neighborhood decided you were. On a stage, in a scene — you could be entirely someone else. Or entirely yourself. Sometimes it’s the same thing.”

I understood this more than I would have expected. “Football was similar,” I said. “On the pitch, nothing else mattered. Not where you came from, not what you had or didn’t have. Just what you could do.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m trying to figure out who I am when I’m not doing it.” I looked at her. “Hence the book that refuses to be written.”

She looked back at me with an expression I was beginning to recognize — the one that meant she was deciding whether to say the true thing or the careful thing. “Maybe the book isn’t cooperating,” she said, “because the story isn’t finished yet.”

Before I could answer, Pedro arrived at a run to inform us that the castle required a flag, urgently, and that this was not a negotiable item. I found a flat piece of driftwood, which was deemed acceptable, and the crisis was resolved.

The sun was low by the time we packed up — two sleepy children, a bucket of shells, one structural driftwood flag that Pedro refused to leave behind, and León, who had been promoted to Chief Castle Guardian for the day.

Pedro fell asleep in the backseat before we’d left the parking lot. Luz followed ten minutes later, her head against the window, León tucked under her chin.

Estrella looked at them in the mirror. The expression on her face was the quietest thing I had ever seen.

“Thank you,” she said, softly enough not to wake them. “Today was —”

“I know,” I said.

She looked at me. “You know?”

“I’ve been to very beautiful beaches,” I said. “This was the best one.”

She was quiet for a moment. Outside, the city began to gather itself around us, lights coming on as the sky darkened.

“Leo,” she said.

I glanced over.

“There are photographers outside my building. There usually are on weekends.” A pause. “I hate making the children navigate that when they’re tired.”

I assessed the information, made a plan, and told her what I was going to do. She listened without arguing, which I had already learned was not a given with Estrella.

It worked. She took the children in through the side entrance while I gave the photographers three minutes of my attention — a comment about the upcoming season, a posture that said this is everything I’m giving you, a deliberate visibility that left them satisfied and looking the wrong direction. When I got upstairs, Estrella was running the bath, the children were depositing sand onto the bathroom floor with great enthusiasm, and she looked at me over Pedro’s head with an expression that included, I thought, a measure of relief that she hadn’t expected to feel.

Luz requested a story. I was made to understand that this was non-negotiable.

I sat on the edge of her bed with Where the Wild Things Are, which I had read enough times now to know the voice for Max and the voice for the Wild Things, and Pedro burrowed against his sister, and Luz held León against her chest, and they were both asleep before the wild rumpus was over.

Estrella stood in the doorway when I came out. The apartment was quiet. The city beyond the windows was doing its nighttime thing.

“I should go,” I said.

She looked at me for a long moment — the same weighing expression I was learning, the one that meant she was being honest with herself about something.

Then she stood on her toes and pressed her mouth to mine, briefly and softly, a question more than a statement. Her hand rested against my chest.

I kept very still. I was afraid that if I moved, she would remember all the reasons she’d been careful.