I don’t want to go to school, Gaspar told his uncle, who told him that was fine. He could still feel Adela’s body beneath him, the way she had struggled, like she was made of rubber, and then her fingers in his eyes, but he knew, he knew, that if he’d made a little more effort she wouldn’t have gotten away. She had gotten away from him. When he wasn’t being called in to talk to some detective or yet another woman in an office (the judge? A psychologist?), Gaspar was in a bed beside his father’s. They let him stay. The sound of the cardiac monitor kept him from sleeping, but he didn’t want to budge. His uncle had to press him to bathe and eat. On one of those breaks from the clinic he found out that Betty was gone, no one knew where she was, and how was it possible that she left right when her daughter had disappeared?, and Gaspar closed his eyes. Maybe Betty had gone looking for Adela. He had to return to his father’s side because, if he woke up even for a second, two seconds, he would tell Gaspar where Adela was or how he could find her. He had looked at his father’s eyes again. Now they were both completely black, as if they reflected the night sky. Like Omaira’s, the girl Vicky still saw in dreams.

His uncle had sat beside him while he devoured some empanadas at the hospital restaurant, which was so nice and had such good food it was like a regular restaurant. He clearly didn’t know what to say, but first he apologized for having gotten angry. He said he “understood,” and they were just getting up to “mischief,” that it was normal for him to try to “escape” what was happening. Uncle Luis, said Gaspar, Adela got away from me. I tried to grab her in the house and she got loose. I let her go. She wanted to go inside and I took her and that was wrong, but on top of that I let her go. It’s not your fault, don’t do that to yourself, his uncle told him. Someone took her. Because of me, said Gaspar. Who else could be to blame?

He went back to his father. If he hasn’t died yet it’s because he wants to talk to me, he thought. Leaning over, he insisted: You know where she is. You know how I can find her. You helped me find the dog. This is the last thing I’m asking. You owe me. Open your eyes. I could open the door, the first one, but not the second. Why can I open some but not others? You have to talk to me.