“No, please. There’s no need for this,” I said, recovering my hand. “It’s Don Martin you have to thank.”

Martin inserted both hands inside his pockets.

With brimming eyes, Mayra promised the best bolón de verde I would ever taste. I glanced at her stomach. My nephew lived in there.

“It hasn’t been all roses in here,” Martin said as she rushed back to the kitchen. “Bachita hasn’t taken the new arrival so well. She says she can manage all the work herself and complains that Mayra doesn’t know how to do the simplest tasks.” As he talked, he pointed at the stairs. “Come on.”

I froze. Now that Martin knew I was a woman, he must surely understand that it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to go to his bedroom. My expression must have given my doubts away because he gave me a slight push on the back.

“Come on, you’re not going to act prim and skittish with me now, are you? I keep my bandages and ointments upstairs, that’s all.”

Hesitantly, I followed. He was right. After all the time we’d spent alone together, I couldn’t suddenly be bothered by the rules of decorum. I’d broken them a long time ago.

Peering at every detail of his house—from the ceramic vases to the portraits of severe men and women along the walls—I followed Martin up the stairs. I had an insatiable curiosity about him. I wanted to know how he lived, what he did when he wasn’t working, what his parents, his family, had been like.

We entered the first room in the hall.

“Have a seat.” He pointed at a den next to a set of windows overlooking the forest.

“What a view,” I said, admiring the turquoise sky, the lush vegetation. And then, a little farther down, a fragment of the river where I’d swum naked. Madre mía, he’d probably watched me from here.

“This used to be my parents’ room,” he said. “My mother always sat by this window, cross-stitching, and usually fell asleep while I played with my marbles by her feet. She had such a lulling presence.”

He approached a chest of drawers and removed a leather case. Inside were bandages and a round tin box with ointment.

“How old were you when she passed away?”

“Ten,” he said. “I remember she had this tic, this small twitch in her nose, especially when she was nervous, and she always dabbed some kind of rose-infused oil on her neck and wrists. Whenever I smell roses, I think of her.”

Poor Martin. At least I’d had my mother until I was a grown woman. I couldn’t imagine losing her at such a young age.

He crouched in front of me and without a warning, removed my spectacles.