The men turned suddenly quiet, their feet in close proximity to each other. Had they heard me? I held my breath.

What were they doing? Didn’t they have a bingo game to go to? Sweat peppered my back and armpits. If I stretched out my arm, I could touch their shoes—that was how close they stood from me. I remembered to breathe, hoping they couldn’t hear me. What was taking so long? I glanced at their feet again.

There was something strange about the way they were standing. They were facing each other. If they’d been a man and a woman, I would’ve sworn they were kissing, close as they were. What else could they be doing? But no, they wouldn’t, would they?

One of them was probably helping the other with his tie or something like that. My mother used to say I had an overactive imagination. There was probably a reasonable explanation for this. Laurent wasn’t that kind of man. He was married to Angélica and he was very flirtatious.

Wait.

He was flirtatious with me, someone he thought to be a man.

And besides, if one of them was fixing the other one’s tie, he would’ve been done already, or they could’ve continued talking. Was I imagining kissing sounds?

After what seemed like hours under the bed, one of the men took a step back.

“We should go back,” he said, this time in Spanish. His voice was low and hoarse and he didn’t have as much of an accent as Laurent.

The two pairs of legs ambled to the door and left the room.

I slid from beneath the bed in a state of shock. What had I just witnessed? Had I imagined things or did Angélica’s husband have a taste for men?

CHAPTER 22 - Angélica

CHAPTER 22

Angélica

Vinces, 1913

“I think you should wear royal blue,” Silvia said. “You can never go wrong with blue. It’s very becoming. More so than pink. Pink is for young girls or people like Catalina.”

I resented my best friend’s disdain when mentioning my sister. I knew Catalina was awkward and not popular among the girls in París Chiquito, but that didn’t mean Silvia had to mock her.

Only I could do that.

“It’s not every day that one turns eighteen,” she said. “You have to do something memorable, something this town has never seen.”

Every time I tried to say something, she would speak again. But that was how Silvia was. Difficult to talk to. She never listened to anyone but herself. And yet, I enjoyed her company more than anybody else’s.