I wanted to weep for her, to experience some sort of catharsis, but I couldn’t. My eyes remained stone dry. I chalked this up to shock. When it abated, the floodgates would open, and the grief and darkness would come in torrents. But not now.

Occasionally I glanced at the dolls hanging from the surrounding trees, the dolls that had miraculously remained fixed in place during what had no doubt been hurricane-force winds and rain. Their eyes stared knowingly at me, their smiles as enigmatic as ever.

Watching and laughing, I thought. And then: If it were up to me, I would burn the fucking island to the ground.

2

I wondered about María. I had so many questions. Was she born with her intellectual disability? Or had her mind deteriorated over the years while she was held prisoner on the island? Had Solano treated her well, or had he abused her? She obviously harbored a strong affection toward him, but that was textbook Stockholm syndrome, wasn’t it? And after he passed away, how had she survived on her own? She seemed capable physically. The vegetables in the root cellar came from a garden somewhere on the island. So had she simply lived off the land? And how had she avoided whoever discovered Solano’s body, and the police who would have come to investigate? Had she hidden from them when they searched the island? Or had they not even bothered to do that? Had they known Solano lived alone, collected his body, and called it a day? And why had she “stopped” Miguel from hurting Lucinda? Given Miguel was naked, and Lucinda was too, my suspicion was that Miguel was not hurting Lucinda at all; more than likely they were having sex. María saw them, misinterpreted what was happening, and stabbed Miguel in the back. As for Lucinda, she was stabbed herself when she tried to stop María and fled in fear.

It seemed to fit. But then again, who knew?

“What’s going to happen to her?” Elizaveta asked abruptly.

“Huh?” I said, blinking.

“María.” Elizaveta sat with her knees pulled to her chest, her arms wrapped around them. Her makeup was cracked, her eyeliner curdled. Her hair stuck up all over the place, as if someone had taken a leaf blower to it. She’d stopped rolling her shoulder, so I assumed the sting wasn’t bothering her anymore.

I wished I could say that about the stab wound in my side. It still hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and I had the sense I’d incurred some serious internal damage. Even so, I was alive. I wasn’t going to complain about that.

“María?” I said, and shrugged.

“From everything you’ve told me,” Pepper said, “I don’t think she’ll be going to prison.”

“I hope not,” Rosa said. “She was sort of nice.”