He could come and go and search in that land. He was welcome in that land. If she was still there, he could find her. Would she still be a child? What had she been given to eat? Had the place been a mouth for her? He had to be sure. In the Other Place, time was a different thing. He could look for her.

He walked away from the door.

“Adela.”

He heard no knocks. Nor did he hear Adela’s voice, though he didn’t remember it. When someone is gone, their voice is the first thing you forget.

“I’m going to come back,” he told her. “I need time. I was never brave. I’m learning.”

And he left the door, the hallway, the guesthouse. He ignored the phone that rang every day. It was Vicky or it was Pablo. He still hadn’t disconnected it. He wanted to see how quickly they gave up. He expected the calls would grow more sporadic, no longer sirens in the jungle, and then fade away. If it was raining, he didn’t cross the park at a run. He liked the short, violent rains of Misiones, the rivers of red earth, the prelude to the hot, black night with its stars throbbing in the sky. A flash, silence, another flash, like an exhausted heart.

Acknowledgments

TK

About the Author

MARIANA ENRIQUEZ is a writer and editor based in Buenos Aires. She has published two story collections in English, Things We Lost in the Fire, and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, which was a finalist for the International Booker Prize, the Kirkus Prize, the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Speculative Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction.