“Yes, I can take him,” I said, drying my tears. “The soldiers know us. I’m going to tell him, though, that he can’t talk about this with his comrades. We can’t be an exit door or put this place in danger. Betty is already putting us at risk, in my opinion. She can’t find out about this, either. She would beg us to get her and Adela out, and that’s impossible. There are plans for the girl. Does Stephen know?”

“He’s looking for a house for them, too.”

Juan massaged his temples and I recognized the signs of a migraine, his red eyes, the right side of his face a little paralyzed. I took his pulse: weak and dangerously fast. It was a severe arrhythmia.

“I can go with you,” he said. “When it’s all ready, we have to give our address to Luis. We can’t lose contact with him. Your parents aren’t going to understand why we want to live in that neighborhood, and I don’t want them to suspect anything. It’s far from Libertador and near the hospital, just like we thought.”

“They’re going to think we want to antagonize them, that’s all. You know why they want Beatriz and Adela to live near us, right? They got it into their heads that the girl will grow more powerful if she’s near you and Gaspar. It’s not the best time to move to Buenos Aires now, but I no longer expect anything to be easy, and I can’t stand this house anymore. I need to work.”

I pulled Gaspar out from under the table so he wouldn’t hit his head, and picked him up. He was sleepy.

“You don’t need to come with me. The soldiers will confuse you and your brother. They don’t know you well enough to tell the difference. They just know my husband is a tall blond man, and that’s enough. You need to rest.”

“I know,” he replied.

Down below, the gardener was getting ready to water the plants. It was better to go the next day. The bodyguards didn’t follow me to the border if I didn’t have Gaspar with me. We had time. We would drive to Asunción like we did every week. And I’d take a quick detour into Foz. They would let me pass. The yerbatero’s daughter. The daughter of the powerful. The guards at the border had arrangements with my father. In Foz, Luis could take any transport or rent a car. As soon as he was in Brazil, he’d be safe. He could be in Río in two days.

We were all going to survive. I could sense it. My son, Juan, Luis, Betty, Adela. For a while, at least. The Darkness was open and the night was clear.

V

The Zañartú Pit

Olga Gallardo, 1993

“Here, we knew,” says the woman, her eyes racked by cataracts and her skin too taut for someone nearing one hundred years old. “They put the bodies there.”