“This sounds like a good-bye.”

“You and I know that only corny people say good-bye.”

“And you could never be corny. Even if you tried.”

“You’re a good friend, Fernandito. And a good man. Sofía is a very lucky woman.”

Fernandito turned to steaming crimson. “How do you know?”

“I’m happy to see that at last you’ve found someone who deserves you.”

“Nobody will ever be like you, Señorita Alicia.”

“Will you do what I asked?”

“Of course.”

“I love you, Fernandito. Keep the keys to the flat. You’ll need a place to take your girl to. It’s your home now. Be happy. And forget me.”

Before he could say another word, Alicia had hung up. Fernandito swallowed hard and, drying his tears, put down the receiver.

24

Alicia walked out of the telephone booth. The taxi was waiting for her a few meters farther on. The driver had pulled down the window and was enjoying a cigarette, his thoughts miles away. When he saw her approach, he prepared to throw the cigarette butt away. “Shall we go?”

“Just one minute. Finish your cigarette.”

“The gates close in ten minutes . . .”

“In ten minutes we’ll be out of here,” said Alicia.

She headed up the hill toward the forest of mausoleums, crosses, angels, and gargoyles covering the mountainside. The sunset had dragged a shroud of red clouds over Montjuïc Cemetery. A curtain of sleet swayed in the breeze, spreading a veil of crystal specks before her. Alicia walked up a path and climbed a few stone steps leading to a balcony populated by tombs and sculptures of ghostly figures. There, standing out against the light of the Mediterranean, stood a gravestone that was slightly tilted.

ISABELLA SEMPERE

1917–1939

Alicia knelt by the grave and placed her hand on the headstone. She remembered the face in the photographs she had seen in Señor Sempere’s apartment, and in the picture Brians had kept of his old client—in all likelihood, also his unmentionable love. She recalled the words she’d read in the notebook and knew that, even though she hadn’t met her, she had never felt as close to anyone as she did to that woman whose remains lay beneath her feet.

“Perhaps it would be best if Daniel never knew the truth and never found Valls or the revenge he longs for,” she said. “But I can’t decide for him. Forgive me.”

Alicia unbuttoned the coat she’d borrowed from the keeper, put her hand in the inside pocket, and pulled out the carved figure he’d given her. She examined the little angel with open wings he’d bought for his daughter in a Christmas market stand so many years ago, inside which she’d hidden messages and secrets for her father. She opened the hollow space and looked at the note she’d written on a scrap of paper on her way to the cemetery.

Mauricio Valls

El Pinar

Calle Manuel Arnús

Barcelona

She rolled up the note and slipped it into the hollow, then put the lid back on and placed the angel figure at the foot of the headstone, between the vases of dry flowers.