I excused myself and headed for the kitchen. Rosita was alone in there, preparing the dough for empanadas.

“Have you seen Juan?”

“Last I saw he was in the living room.”

I darted outside but there was no sign of him. I could go to his place, but that would be too undignified and besides, what would I say? Why didn’t you wait in the kitchen, like I told you? He would think I was insane. And maybe I was losing my mind a little. I couldn’t even understand what I was feeling. All I knew is that I hadn’t expected to see Juan again. Not today, anyway.

I stared down the road that led to his house, wishing things could be as simple as they were before he’d left.

* * *

The guests were gathering downstairs already. My hands trembled as I put my sapphire earrings on. Silvia had been right. Blue suited me. My mother had agreed blindly with all of Silvia’s suggestions, not caring much for terrestrial affairs herself.

My mother came from humble origins. She was one of eight siblings, and all of them considered her the luckiest girl in El Milagro, her hometown, to have found a rich foreigner to marry her—that was the lie they told everybody. The truth was my father already had a wife in Europe, but both of my parents acted as if his real wife was nothing but a long-lost relative.

I couldn’t understand what my father saw in my mother. She was plain looking and not too bright, but she treated him like a god. She never argued, but simply joined her hands in prayer when he said something offensive. Such servitude, such blind loyalty was not easy to find. My father liked that she forgave easily, that she wasn’t demanding. There had been only one instance that I knew of, one offense in their lukewarm life that my mother didn’t tolerate. And he’d suffered for his extramarital indiscretion with one month of silence from my mother. Eventually, they’d reached a truce.

A few months after that, my father had gotten drunk and mentioned his Spanish wife for the first time. He said it was her birthday and he was drinking in her honor. He said her name was Maribel and she could dance flamenco like a goddess. He also said she had gorgeous hair, all the way to her waist, and skin as soft as the petal of a flower, but she had a rotten temper and held grudges for years. She was like a matchstick, he’d said, quickly incensed.

“What a foul mouth she had,” he told me after finishing a bottle of wine, “but she sure knew how to love a man.”