“Are you still mad at me?” asked Chet. “Don’t answer that.” He yelled something, and I heard him assent to the car being brought around to the front of some building. “You’re not going to stay mad, Ting. That’s the thing with you. You’re really hotheaded but can never stay angry for long.” Then he hung up.

Chet was determined to make things right, the book an apology. I held it in my hands. In reality, I wasn’t angry with him. I was in battle with myself. I’d imagined my retreat to Tita Rosa’s as a way of fleeing from society, as if my aunt’s house were some sort of medieval nunnery and I a woman revoking all to be there. I didn’t want another man in my life. But I also knew that if Chet were to disappear, I would miss him. I was dogged by the memory that my mother had adored Chet, had loved him, his astonishing confidence and his manners. When Chet saw my mother, he would throw his hands in the air—even at twenty years old—in appreciation of her beauty. And she would acknowledge this recognition with a wry smile and a nod to me. He seemed to be saying to her, then, that if I was nearly that beautiful at her age, he would be the happiest man alive. And now I had reached that number of years and a few more. He had predicted that I would age well and now felt affirmed, and even though a part of me was weakly signaling that I was more than this, it felt good, at almost fifty, to be so desired.

I went to the sala with the book and a glass of Coke and sat on a low velvet chair. Once, my uncle’s life-size portrait had hung on the wall opposite and the outline of where it had been was visible on the faded wallpaper. A standing fan rattled energetically a few feet away. I took a swig from my glass, set it on the side table, and opened the book. So what if I accepted Chet’s gift? What did it matter? It was research, my research, and I had a right to it.