She and Rosario were close friends as well as half-sisters. Tali had cried when, at eighteen years old, Rosario left for England to study, telling Tali she was going to the best university in the world and she was happy. Juan had turned fifteen by then, and he’d spent the whole summer that year in Puerto Reyes. He, too, was very sad at Rosario’s departure. When she visited her father’s house, Tali had been astonished to see Juan again in the cool air of the terrace overlooking the river. She had grown up seeing children of immigrants who were tall and blond like this boy: Swedes from Oberá, Germans from Eldorado, Ukrainians from Aristóbulo del Valle. On outings with her father, she sometimes lunched on sausages and admired the orchids on display in the community festivals, and she had been stupidly infatuated with many of those youths with transparent eyes and skin bronzed by the sun. But when Juan stood up from his wicker chair and kissed both her cheeks, all those men and women seemed like the practice sketches of a clumsy painter, tentative versions made by a hand that was learning, until finally it drew Juan and gave him life and said this is it, this is what I was looking for, the perfect finish. Juan was fifteen, she was seventeen, and yet her ears burned when he sat looking at her in silence. You want to go for a walk? Tali asked him. It’s not so hot out. Sure, the boy replied. They walked through the house’s wild garden. She told him about the Scandinavians of Oberá and asked if his family was also from there. Juan said yes, but that they’d moved to Buenos Aires when he was born because he was very sick. Maybe you still have family here. I don’t know, said Juan.

That night, after dining on yacare caiman with fried yuca—the specialty of Reyes’ cook, Rufina—Juan tore out a page from the notebook where he’d been doodling while the others had coffee (he didn’t partake) and gave it to her: it was a drawing of two dogs barking at a moon with rays that made it seem more like a sun, but it was a moon because it had a woman’s face. In the distance he had drawn two low towers, one for each dog, and in front of them a lake or pond with a creature emerging from it that could be a lobster or a scorpion. Underneath the drawing he’d written the words “La Lune,” and Tali immediately recognized one of the cards from the Tarot deck Rosario read—the Moon from the Marseilles Tarot. Her sister had tried to teach her, but Tali preferred the Spanish deck.

“I can teach you, too, now that she’s gone away,” Juan had told her.

“How did you know I wanted to learn?”

“Rosario told me. She said she never could explain it to you well. I’m a better teacher than she is.”