“Because that’s what you always were to me—what you still are—beautiful.”

“Yes, well—” her eyes clouded over, the hint of a smile fleeing for its life, “nothing beautiful happened to me.”

“Tell me.”

“What’s wrong with your right shoulder, Tío?”

He smiled inwardly; it was a good sign that she was noticing things outside herself. “I was shot.”

“Shot?!” She was clearly shocked. “Why?”

“I was overseas, in a war zone. It’s part of my job.”

“To get shot?”

“Possibly, but hopefully not. This time something went wrong.”

“You’re okay?”

“I’m fine, guapa. Really. I’m at the end of rehab. I’ll be deployed within a day or so.”

“For how long?”

“Not long. These deployments are usually forty-eight hours or so.” Short but intense, he thought. “When I get back I’ll take you out of here. We’ll go together to see your mother.”

“No!” Lucy closed the cameo in her fist. “I don’t want to see her.”

“But why not?”

Lucy looked away. The fist enclosing the cameo trembled perceptibly.

“But, guapa, she loves you.”

Lucy’s head swung back, and she looked at him with eyes brimming with tears. “Did you ever ask yourself why I ran away?”

“You fell into a bad crowd, got hooked on drugs, and—”

“¡Basta!” she cried. Enough! “She told you that.”

“Yes.”

“It’s a lie. The truth…” Lucy shook her head back and forth like an animal caught in a trap about to chew off its paw. “The truth…”

“Lucy—”

“The truth will kill me.”

Now Flix did lean forward, took her free hand in his, noted how damp it was with cold sweat. “Guapa, this is me. I could never be there for you when you were young, but I’m here now. I won’t let anything happen to you. This I swear with all my heart and soul. Please tell the truth now. You must see that keeping it to yourself is what’s killing you.”

Lucy stared at him with eyes swollen with tears and years of unknown heartbreak. “Maybe you’re right, Tío. It’s why I slipped into drugs, then fled the house.” All at once, her fingers gripped his with a terrible ferocity. “It was…” She choked, pulled back, and then with an enormous show of courage, pressed forward. “It was my father. Mama didn’t protect me against him. She knew all about it. She knew and did nothing to protect me.”

“Wait a minute, your father abused you and my sister knew?”

Reacting to the shocked look on his face, she said, “She was terrified of him—and of you.”

Flix found himself reeling. “Me?”

Lucy nodded. “She was afraid of what you’d do to him if she told you.”

“Damn right. I would have—”

“And landed in the stockade? Court-martialed? Jailed for life?”

Lucy’s voice sounded to him like the oracle of Tikal, her words like a chant or a prayer, as if it were coming from another plane of existence, one he could not ever have imagined until this dreadful moment. Not in his family. Never. “Aiii!” Flix clutched his head, which felt like it was about to explode.