Page 28 of An Immaculate Deception

“Why, of course, Madalena,” Doctor Lobo says. “If this is your wish, I can give you a ride home.” He resumes cutting his steak.

Relief washes over me. I was expecting more resistance, and am pleasantly surprised the doctor agreed so easily. But Leandro looks pale.

Dessert arrives. Doce de leite flan, pooled in a sweet sugar glaze, and a fruit cake with a white layer of frosting, raisins, citrus, and the smell of molasses. Delicate small porcelain plates with floral details, little spoons that glimmer in the candlelight.

Leandro looks somehow even more distraught than before I announced I was leaving, and I almost feel sorry for him. Have I given offense? He has not tried to prevent my leaving. I do not know what he is thinking, if he loathes me or not, if I should loathe him or not, but I am leaving tonight. I have had enough.

Doctor Lobo licks his lips. “Madalena? Would you like some flan or fruit cake?”

I regard the fruit cake, dressed up in raisins, served for consumption. For satisfaction. Then it hits me: There is something the foul woman left behind. Something concrete, which Leandro keeps against all odds.

15

Maria das Dores startles when she sees me in the kitchen.

“Do you need something, Sinhá Madalena?” she asks tentatively.

I regard the moldy mass that once was a cake. In the dim kitchen lighting, I cannot see the critters moving within it, and it almost seems innocent. I imagine when it was first baked, it was fresh and still gave off the aroma of molasses and citrus.

“Sinhá Madalena…?” Maria das Dores ventures.

And then, just as expected, Leandro appears in the doorway. His face is a mask of alarm.

“What are you doing?” he says.

Finally, the sullen man speaks. And this time, there is no pretense. It’s the real Leandro. I see it in his face, the mask has come off. I feel so close to having the real Leandro finally talk to me. I’m on the edge of a breakthrough.

“This is connected to her somehow,” I say, looking between Leandro and the moldy cake. “It is why you cannot dispose of it. Perhaps it was the last thing she ate before she died. Maybe you two shared it as a last meal. It is some kind of remnant, a symbol…”

My own voice sounds like it’s coming from someone else. I realize as I speak that of all the terrible suspicions plaguing my mind, the one that bothers me the most is simply that Leandro loves someone else. That Mother was right, and he never really cared for me at all.

Maria das Dores takes a step back. Doctor Lobo appears behind Leandro, looking so large in comparison with the other two. They’re all thinking I am hysterical.

“What’s the matter?” Doctor Lobo asks.

Don’t make a scene, says a voice in the back of my mind. Just go home quietly and like a lady. Swallow your reservations, repress your emotions, never step out of line.

“Is that why you’re so distraught here?” I say to Leandro. “You’re haunted by her?”

“By who?” Doctor Lobo says.

“Who was down in the senzala?” I press, ignoring Doctor Lobo.

Leandro doesn’t respond. His gaze floats to my hand. I see the intensity in his eyes, in the way he looks at the cake. I can almost see his pupils enlarge.

“No one’s haunted, Madalena,” Doctor Lobo says. “Just come back to the table.”

His placating tone infuriates me. I’m not a child and I’m not a patient in his asylum.

How can he speak for Leandro anyway?

“I would believe it,” I say, “if only it were Leandro saying it.”

Leandro doesn’t take the cue I’ve offered. He just continues his campaign of tortured silence. How easy it would be for Leandro to say, No, you’re wrong, there is no woman from my past. Yet he won’t say it.

“And you’ve decided that based on what…” Doctor Lobo says, “a moldy cake?”

I suck in a breath. Now that he says it like that, it makes me look like a lunatic. I know that’s what they’re all thinking, Madalena the deranged woman, touched by the moon, and I almost pull my hand away from the dome.