Nogueira came out on the porch and waved at him to hurry up. Manuel finally got out of the car and hustled to the door, hunching over both to protect his face from the rain and to avoid the policeman’s gaze.
Café slipped between the man’s legs and the doorframe. The dog ran toward Manuel, barking, yipping, and wagging his tail. Manuel stopped short, relieved and surprised, and bent down to receive his dog. The dog jumped up in an unsuccessful effort to lick his face. He grinned, trying both to calm the dog and yet to reward that celebration. Laura and Xulia appeared in the doorway next to Nogueira, and little Antía joined them. Manuel saw the child smile but recognized the same melancholy that had just abandoned him. He knew why.
He said nothing to Nogueira until they were alone together. Then he related the conversation with Vicente and after that the one with Catarina that had given him the eerie sensation of missing something, like listening to a grand symphony played by only half the orchestra. He was torn between his admiration for Catarina and his repugnance for her relationship with the Raven. He didn’t know how to deal with this mix of prejudices and vague premonitions. He’d liked Catarina from the first moment he saw her. She had an innate elegance and that sense of class that made her very attractive, and obviously not only to him; but perhaps it had misled him into attributing exaggerated virtues to her, almost idealizing her. After all, she was a woman of flesh and blood, a person with human emotions, subject to human temptations. So what if she’d felt a passing attraction to a man who was a faithful assistant and admired those things she loved most of all? And did it matter if she secretly envied Elisa for her son because she herself hadn’t succeeded in conceiving? And who cared if sometimes she felt tired, fed up with fulfilling the role of mothering a weak and willful husband? Would any of that diminish her grace and virtue?
Nogueira looked as if he were reading Manuel’s thoughts, but he wasn’t. “What’s running through your head, writer?”
Manuel smiled. “Something occurred to me while I was driving. Something to do with what Ophelia said the first time we spoke. When she got to the scene of álvaro’s accident, there was already a rumor going around that a Mu?iz de Dávila was involved. She said everyone was acting a bit strange.”
Nogueira nodded. “I noticed that myself.”
“And all this stuff about their influence and importance in the region . . .”
“Where are you going with all this?”
“Doesn’t it seem strange that if people knew a Mu?iz de Dávila died in an accident at 1:30 a.m., no one had the consideration to inform the family? That they didn’t hear about it until the hospital called them at dawn?”
Nogueira nodded emphatically. He took out his phone. “I think you have something there.”
The hallway to his room at the inn always stood silent and dark upon his arrival. A monitoring system detected his presence and progressively lit the hall lights ahead of him as he walked toward his door. This time he was surprised to find the hall completely illuminated. Already on the stair landing he heard the unmistakable sound of cartoons coming from the open door to Elisa’s room.
Café scurried ahead in that direction, but before the dog reached the door Samuel appeared and peered expectantly down the hall. He saw Manuel and shouted, “It’s Uncle!” He turned and called into the room. “It’s Uncle Manuel!” He hurled himself down the hall toward the man’s arms.
Manuel hoisted him high, and as always had the impression he was embracing a big slippery fish with ideas of its own. He felt those small sturdy arms around his neck, the softness of the boy’s skin against his face, and the moist lips of the child’s kiss.
“Hello, dear heart! How was your day?”
“Really good!” the little fellow replied. “I met Isabel and Carmen. They’re my cousins. I didn’t know I had cousins!”
“Was it fun meeting them?”
The boy affirmed it with great emphatic nods.
Elisa smiled from the door to their room. “Hello, Manuel!”
Manuel put the child down and gave her his hand. He felt a little hand thrusting into the pocket of his heavy jacket. He reached after it and felt the silky surface of petals. He knelt and gazed into the eyes of the boy, who responded with a smile. Manuel took the gardenia from his pocket and held it before him.
He saw surprise in Elisa’s face. She came forward for a closer look. “Did you put that flower in there, sweetie?”
Samuel smiled happily. He had. “It’s a present!”
“It’s very beautiful,” Manuel said in thanks. “And tell me, have you been putting flowers in my pocket every day?”
Samuel put a finger in his mouth and nodded shyly.
Manuel smiled. He’d been so startled by the appearance of those flowers in his pockets, but they’d simply been the gifts of a child.
“Have you been giving Uncle flowers without telling me, you little rascal?” asked Elisa, amused.
“It’s just . . . It’s ’cause it has to be a secret.”
His mother was intrigued. “A secret?”
“He told me to put the flowers in there and not tell anybody.”
Elisa looked at Manuel in confusion, then turned back to her son. “Who told you to do that? Samuel, it’s okay to tell me.”
This sudden intense attention bothered Samuel. He pulled loose from Manuel. He ran toward the open door of his room and called back, “Uncle, it was Uncle who asked me to!”
“Uncle Santiago asked you to put flowers in my pockets?”
“No!” shrieked the boy as he reached the room. “Uncle álvaro!”
Manuel instantly felt nailed to the spot. He heard again Lucas speaking about the boy’s active imagination and imaginary friends. Oh, little Samuel! He tried to hide his agitation, but when he raised his eyes he met Elisa’s gaze.
She seemed almost ashamed. “Oh, Manuel, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how . . .”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.” He took her arm. “It’s just that he took me by surprise. I was finding these flowers every day, and . . .”
“I’m really sorry, Manuel, I don’t know what to say. Maybe he saw álvaro do that sometime. It was a habit of his.”
“Yes,” Manuel answered in a neutral tone.
He had dinner with Elisa and Samuel in the inn restaurant, laughing at the boy’s antics. Samuel kept slipping bits of his own meal beneath the table for Café. Manuel enjoyed Elisa’s company. She’d changed; it was as if by getting away from As Grileiras she’d shed a veil and had left behind her sepia tint of sadness. She was no longer the image of an old photograph, for she smiled, chatted, laughed, and scolded Samuel half in jest. Manuel had the idea he was seeing her alive and in charge of her own life for the first time.
They were laughing at something the boy had said, and at that moment Manuel became newly aware of his feelings. He was flooded with waves of love, bewilderment, and the fear of not seeing them ever again. He sensed Elisa’s importance to him and his love for Samuel. He smiled broadly.
Elisa spoke and pulled him out of his reverie. “I called my brother. You remember, I told you about him? He’s married and has two young daughters.”
“Samuel mentioned it. He seems delighted with his two cousins.”
“Yes, he is.” Elisa smiled. “It seems terrible to me now that we deprived him of the pleasure of meeting them. One more mistake on a very long list,” she accused herself in a matter-of-fact tone. “But we talked a lot today. I think things will work out between us.” She reached out to cover Manuel’s hand with her own. “And you had a lot to do with it. If you hadn’t helped me, I don’t know if I’d have had the strength to leave that place.”