That night, Gaspar flopped on his bed with his headphones on and thought how he needed to go back to his house, the one where he’d lived with his father. He wanted to go through everything that was left. Had someone taken their things away? His uncle had told him it was all untouched. Why didn’t Stephen call? Gaspar preferred him out of his life, but was curious about what had happened to him. And Tali. Was Tali uninterested in him, too?

That night, for the first time since he’d come to Villa Elisa, he had thought without fear—or at least keeping his fear in check—about Adela and the house. He pictured her. Pictured the street. Remembered the walk in the darkness. He closed his eyes and saw her again in the doorway where she had disappeared, waving. The shadows behind her. The darkness behind her. The memory of Adela had made him start to tremble. But not so much. And without nausea.

Tomorrow, he decided, when his uncle woke up, he was going to ask for Vicky’s number. He didn’t want to do it now, in the middle of the night, when it might scare her family. And he wanted his uncle to be there, in case things went bad.

But they weren’t going to go bad, he was sure of it.

Not much was left in his house, simply because there hadn’t been much in it to begin with. His uncle had cleaned the rooms so that when Gaspar had his reencounter with the books, objects, clothes, he wouldn’t find neglect as well. Going inside made him nervous, but not afraid. Crossing through the doorway of his father’s room had been the hardest part, but once he was inside, the smell of dust obscured his memories.

What he did avoid was going down Calle Villarreal and seeing the house where Adela had disappeared. He was not ready for that, and he thought he never would be.

In his house, he had a superstitious impulse. He took the clothes out to the patio and burned them, just as he’d seen his father burn his mother’s clothes years before. Vicky and Pablo loaded books into boxes while he tended the flames with a shovel and remembered those pants, that shirt with the rolled-up sleeves, the white T-shirt now moth-eaten after years in storage. His father had been cremated. He didn’t know where his ashes were: he hadn’t wanted to ask. It seemed like enough to burn his clothes.