“—that no harm shall come to them.”
Sean Fallon put down his pencil, gave up the futile attempt to solve his problems in time, and laid his head across his folded arms atop his desk. He waited for the room to stop spinning, for the bolt of pain behind his eyes to go away. Inside his head, their voices began as a low hum, white static as the dial rolled to the next station on the radio, and then the words came overlaid, bits and pieces distinguishable from the cacophony: Sharon's thoughts, Mark's, Dori's. The wandering mind of Lucas Ford. Gail Watts practicing an étude in her imagination. Mrs. Patterson, please just make them stop. All the children wondering, doubting, believing—until the sound of their ideas and feelings coalesced into a wall of music, measured and cadenced, like a symphony between his ears, and the music did not stop until Mrs. Patterson, straight-backed as a conductor, tapped a ruler on the desk and invited them to begin their consideration of the first subject of the day, history.
3
The eyes of Our Lady of Guadalupe betrayed an all-too-human emotion. Instead of looking upward to the heavens or downward in mercy to the earth, she focused on some object to the left of the frame of the retablo, and the wayward gaze made her appear contemplative, almost sad, mourning the viewer, or remembering her son, heartbroken over his early death. A mother pained for her child, full of despair over her powerlessness against fate and the child's stronger will. The primitive style of composition and brushstroke could not hide the merciless intelligence of the painter, who had captured in a single gesture the pathos of motherhood. Six other folk paintings hung on the walls of the café: Matthew, the scribe; Mark, the lion; Luke, the winged bull; John, the eagle; San Pascual, the patron of cooks; and one labeled Angel de la Guardia. In niches hollowed into the adobe, santos perched like puppets awaiting the breath of life or the master's hand, and by the cash register, bultos of the holy family stood like refugees from a Christmas crèche.
Diane sipped a coffee laced with pi?on and stirred a bowl of blue corn atole. The time change between Washington and Albuquerque had thrown her, and she had risen earlier than the local hour, the late-winter light slipping over the city as she wandered past the closed storefronts and restaurants, searching for breakfast in Old Town. The Café de Santeros had the only open door, and for a time, she was alone with the beautiful young girl who had served her and then went back to idly sketching flowers in a spiral-bound notebook. After circling the room, taking in each of the paintings done by the same hand, Diane sat with her coffee and thought of her sister and the strange child she had left behind the week before. Protests were declared, but she had been forgiven for leaving as soon as she had promised to return. She told Margaret nothing of her travel plans. After a few days to take care of things at home in Washington, Diane had packed for New Mexico, armed with an old photograph of Erica, a child's implausible claim, and an X on a map.
Norahs outburst at the school had compelled Diane to go, not so much for the girl's welfare, but for her sister's sake. She had seen what loss could do to Margaret—the stunning silences, how she seemed to shrink with each blow until diminishing to nothing more than a whisper, a feather, a sigh. As the only children, they had grown up as close as twins, just two years apart; each reflected the best and worst of the other. While the indeterminacies of fate pulled them apart as young women, sending Diane off to travel around the world with her husband while Margaret settled in with the doctor in their hometown, they remained committed to the idea of sisterhood. Summer family vacations together at the shore, long-distance calls, letters, consoling as no other could at the passing of Daddy, and three years later their mother. When Erica had vanished, Margaret had phoned her first, even before the police, and Diane watched her sister drown month by month and then float back to a kind of half-life. She could save her now by finding her missing girl. Or at least uncover the truth about Norah.
On the sidewalk outside the café, a flock of pigeons took flight en masse, wheeling to formation in synchronicity The front door creaked open and in came two young men, dressed snug against the cold. Behind the counter, the girl laid down her pencil, waved hello, and braced to receive their orders. They appeared to be regulars, smiling back in a familiar fashion and not bothering to read the slate chalked with today's menu.
“Qué pasa, Lupita?” the one with the sweeping black mustache said. “Anything fresh today? Besides you?”
Lupita rolled her eyes in mock annoyance, but her smile gave away her pleasure.