Part Four: Behind the Bougainvillea
She led him along the hedge.
The path was narrow — a maintenance path used by Tomás for carrying equipment, known to Abril from years of following her father around the estate. It ran along the south side of the house, behind the ornamental garden, to the greenhouse and its surrounding plantings.
Santiago followed the twelve-year-old daughter of his gardener along a path in his own garden that he had never walked, because he had not known it was there.
At the end of the path, the bougainvillea made a curtain.
Abril stopped. She looked at him, a look that was both a warning and a question — are you sure — and he nodded.
He looked through the gap.
The greenhouse glass caught the morning light and threw it across the path and across the two people standing in the shade of the wall beyond it.
Valeria.
She was wearing the light-colored dress she sometimes wore on mornings when she had nowhere to be — a casual thing, her hair down, the version of her that was most domestic, most familiar, most his. Beside her was a man in an expensive shirt — thirties, lean, with the specific quality of someone who maintained an appearance carefully. Santiago did not recognize him.
He watched Valeria reach up.
He watched her touch the man’s face.
He watched her kiss him.
It was not a kiss that required interpretation. It was not ambiguous or hurried or the kiss of people doing something they were ashamed of. It was slow and certain and intimate — the kiss of people who had kissed many times and were not performing anything for anyone, who had simply forgotten, or stopped caring, that the world contained witnesses.
She rested her forehead against his.
Santiago heard her voice — the same voice that had just called his phone to ask if he was on his way — say, quietly, just a little longer. When this is over, we won’t have to hide anymore.
The man smiled.
“I love you,” she said.
