She had lain down to rest that Saturday at the end of January because she had a blinding headache, only to wake up several hours later with the terrifying sensation that she had committed a crime. The house was in darkness, Frankie was asleep, and Evelyn was nowhere to be found, something that had never happened before. She could easily have gone mad, envisaging all the possible explanations for the incredible disappearance of Evelyn, the car, and Kathryn Brown’s body.
Frank Leroy got back the following Monday. Cheryl had spent the two intervening days in a state of absolute panic, and as she confessed to Lucia, had it not been for her sense of duty toward her son, she would have swallowed all her sleeping pills and put an end to her miserable existence once and for all. When Frank couldn’t find the missing Lexus or his lover, he imagined all sorts of explanations, apart from her having been murdered. He only learned about it when her body was discovered and he was accused of the crime.
“I think Evelyn got rid of the evidence to protect Frankie and me,” Cheryl told Lucia.
“No, Cheryl. She thought your husband had killed Kathryn and went to Florida as an alibi, without ever imagining someone might use the Lexus. The cold would preserve the body until the Monday when he returned.”
“What? Evelyn didn’t know it was me? So why did she . . . ?”
“Evelyn took out the Lexus to go the drugstore while you were asleep. My partner, Richard Bowmaster, collided with her. That’s how he and I got mixed up in all this. Evelyn thought that when your husband returned he would know she had used the car and seen what was in the trunk. She was terrified of him.”
“In other words . . . You didn’t know what happened either,” murmured Cheryl, the color draining from her face.
“No. I only knew Evelyn’s version. She thought Frank Leroy was going to eliminate her, to silence her. She was also scared for you and Frankie.”
“So what’s going to happen to me now?” asked Cheryl, horrified at what she had confessed.
“Nothing, Cheryl. The Lexus is at the bottom of a lake, and no one suspects the truth. What we’ve said stays between the two of us. I’ll tell Richard, because he deserves to know, but there’s no need for anyone else to find out. Frank Leroy has already done you and many others enough harm.”
Epilogue
At nine in the morning of the last Sunday in May, Richard and Lucia were drinking coffee in bed with Marcelo and Dois, the only one of the four cats that the dog had become friendly with. For Lucia this was early: what need was there to wake up so soon on a Sunday? For Richard it was part of the enjoyable decadence of life as a couple. It was a brilliant spring day, and in a while they would go and fetch Joseph Bowmaster to take him for lunch. That afternoon the three of them would then proceed to the bus terminal to wait for Evelyn, because the old man had insisted on meeting her. He could not forgive his son for neglecting to ask him to take part in that January’s odyssey. “What would we have done with you in a wheelchair, Dad?” Richard kept saying, but Joseph saw that as an excuse rather than a reason; if they had managed to take a Chihuahua along, they could have taken him as well.
Thirty-two hours earlier, Evelyn had left Miami, where, in the months she had been living there, she had begun to create a more or less normal existence for herself. She still lived with Daniela but was thinking of becoming independent in the near future. She worked looking after children in a day care center and waiting on tables in the evenings. Richard was helping her financially, because as Lucia always said, you have to spend your money on something before you end up in the cemetery. Evelyn’s grandmother Concepcion Montoya had put to good use the money orders Evelyn regularly sent her, first from Brooklyn and then Miami. She had replaced her shack with a brick house that had an extra room from which she could sell the secondhand clothing her daughter dispatched from Chicago. She no longer went to the market to sell her tamales, but only to buy provisions and chat with her neighbors. Evelyn thought she must be around sixty, but in the eight years since the deaths of her two grandsons and Evelyn’s absence, suffering had aged her, as she could tell from a couple of photos that Father Benito had taken. These showed her in her elegant attire, the outfit she had worn for thirty years and would go on wearing until her dying day: the thick blue and black woven skirt, the huipil blouse embroidered with the colors of her village, the red and orange sash around her waist, and the heavy, colorful headdress on her head.
According to Father Benito, Concepcion was still very active, but her body had shrunk and shriveled. She was as wrinkled as a monkey, and since she was always going around murmuring prayers under her breath, people thought she was crazy. That worked in her favor because no one asked her to pay protection money anymore and she was left in peace. Once every two weeks Concepcion spoke to her granddaughter on Father Benito’s cell phone, because she refused to have one of her own, as Evelyn had offered. It was a very dangerous apparatus that worked without a plug or batteries and caused cancer. “Come and live with me, Grandma,” Evelyn had begged her, but Concepcion thought this was a dreadful idea. What would she do in the north, and who would feed her chickens and water her plants while she was away? Strangers could come and take over her house; you had to be very careful. Yes, she would visit her granddaughter, but she would see when was a good moment. Evelyn understood that this moment would never arrive and hoped that someday soon her own situation would allow her to pay a visit to Monja Blanca del Valle, if only for a few days.
“We’ll have to tell Evelyn the truth about what happened to Kathryn,” Richard told Lucia.
“Why complicate things? It’s enough that you and I know. And besides, it’s not important anymore.”
“What do you mean it’s not important? Cheryl Leroy killed that woman.”
“I hope you’re not thinking she should pay for her crime, Richard. It was an accident.”
“You’re a disastrous influence in my life, Lucia. Before I met you I was an honest, serious man, an academic beyond reproach . . .” He sighed.
“You were such a bore, Richard, but even so, I fell in love with you.”
“I never thought I would end up obstructing justice.”
“The law is cruel and justice is blind. We tilted the balance slightly in favor of natural justice, because we were protecting Evelyn, and now we have to do the same for Cheryl. Frank Leroy was a criminal and he paid for his sins.”
“How ironic they couldn’t catch him for the crimes he committed and he had to escape for a crime he didn’t commit,” said Richard.
“You see? That’s what I mean by natural justice,” said Lucia, kissing him lightly on the lips. “Do you love me, Richard?”
“What do you think?”
“That you adore me and can’t understand how you lived for so long without me, bored and with a hibernating heart.”
“ ‘In the midst of winter, I finally found there was within me an invincible summer.’ ”
“Did you just think of that?”
“No. It’s by Albert Camus.”