“I’ve always thought that’s how you get to hear the best conversations,” Alicia suggested.

Mercedes smiled mischievously. “My father thought that someone had been there. During the party. In his office.”

“Did he say who?”

“No.”

“What else? Anything that struck you as unusual?”

“Something about a list. He said someone had a list. I don’t know who.”

“Do you know what kind of list he meant?”

“No, I don’t. A list of numbers, I think. I’m sorry. I’d like to be able to help you more, but that’s all I managed to hear . . .”

“You’ve helped me a lot, Mercedes.”

“Really?”

Alicia nodded and stroked Mercedes’s cheek. Nobody had caressed her like that since ten years earlier, when her mother had been confined to her bed and the bones in her hands had ended up like hooks.

“What do you think your father meant when he said ‘come what may’?”

“I don’t know.”

“Had you ever heard him say that before?”

Mercedes fell silent and stared straight at Alicia.

“Mercedes?”

“I don’t like talking about that.”

“About what?”

“My father told me never to talk about it to anyone.”

“But I’m not anyone. You can talk to me.”

“If my father found out that I’d told you—”

“He won’t find out.”

“Do you swear?”

“I swear. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Tell me, Mercedes. What you tell me will remain between you and me. You have my word.”

Mercedes looked at her, her eyes brimming with tears. Alicia pressed her hand.

“I must have been seven or eight, I don’t know. It was in Madrid, at the Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus School. Every afternoon my father’s bodyguards would come and fetch me from school. We girls all waited in the cypress-tree patio for our parents or maids to come and pick us up at five thirty. The lady often came. She always stood on the other side of the gates, looking at me. Sometimes she smiled at me. I didn’t know who she was. But she was there almost every day. She would signal to me to come closer, although she scared me a bit. One afternoon, the security guards were late. Something had happened in Madrid, in the center of town. I remember that all the other cars came and took the other girls away, and I was left alone, waiting. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but when one of the cars was leaving, the lady slipped in through the gates. She came up to me and knelt down before me. Then she hugged me and began to cry. She was kissing me. I got frightened and started shouting. The nuns came out. The security guards arrived, and I remember that two of the men grabbed her by her arms and dragged her away. The lady shouted and cried. I remember that one of my father’s men punched her in the face. Then she pulled out something she’d been hiding in her handbag. It was a gun. The bodyguards moved out of the way, and she ran toward me. Her face was covered in blood. She hugged me and told me she loved me and I should never forget her.”