“Haven’t you learned your lesson yet, Fernandito?”

“It’s not what it looks like, Auntie.”

“I’d rather not say what it looks like, but as I’m your aunt, and the only member of the family who seems to have any common sense, I must tell you what I’ve told you a thousand times.”

“That Señorita Alicia is not the right woman for me,” Fernandito recited from memory.

“And that one day she’ll break your heart, as they say on the radio,” Jesusa completed.

That day had been left behind years ago, but Fernandito preferred not to stir things up. Jesusa went up to him and smiled tenderly, pinching his cheeks as if he were still ten years old. “I don’t want you to suffer, that’s all. Señorita Alicia—and you know how fond I am of her, as if she were family—she’s a ticking bomb waiting to go off: when we least expect it, she’ll explode and take everyone in her path with her, and may God forgive me for saying so.”

“I know, Auntie. I know. Don’t you worry, I know what I’m doing.”

“That’s what your uncle said the day he drowned.”

Fernandito stooped down to kiss her on her forehead and charged up the stairs. He walked into Alicia’s apartment, leaving the door ajar as he followed her instructions. The box she’d described was under the sitting-room sofa. He opened it, had a quick look at the pile of documents, and noticed, among them, the envelope marked “Isabella.” He didn’t dare open it.

He closed the box and wondered who this Fermín Romero de Torres was, who merited all Alicia’s confidence, the person to whom she entrusted herself as her last salvation. He supposed that, in the great scheme of things, there were many other characters in Alicia’s life about whom he knew nothing, and who played an infinitely more important role than his.

Perhaps you thought you were the only one . . .

He picked up the box and walked back to the door. Before stepping out and closing it, he took one last look at Alicia’s apartment, convinced that he would never again set foot in it. When he reached the entrance hall, he saw his aunt Jesusa, armed with her large broom, still trying to hold back the rain filtering in through the main door. He stopped for a moment.

“You coward,” he murmured to himself. “You shouldn’t have let her go.”

Jesusa interrupted her efforts and looked at him, intrigued. “What are you saying, sweetheart?”

Fernandito sighed. “Auntie, can I ask you a favor?”

“But of course.”

“I need you to hide this box where nobody can find it. It’s very important. Don’t tell anyone you’ve got it. Not even the police, if they come around asking. No one.”

Jesusa’s face darkened. The caretaker took a quick look at the box and made the sign of the cross. “Oh dear, oh dear . . . What mess have you two got yourselves in?”

“Nothing that can’t be fixed.”