But there was a hole in this theory. Nothing seemed to link Angélica to Franco or the check. The only thing remotely interesting in her drawer had been the photograph of an unknown girl.

“Ay, Papá. Your Angélica is something else, isn’t she?”

I stood up, dusting the dirt from my trousers. I was not far from Franco’s house. It would probably take me about five minutes to get there. I plucked a daisy from the ground and set it on my father’s grave.

The burned-out house was larger than I remembered. There was no front door so I just stepped inside. It was hard to determine what I was looking at. Pieces of wood that must have belonged to the ceiling or a wall had collapsed on the floor and were now charred. Mountains of rubble filled what might have been, at one point, a parlor. The staircase was mostly gone, but surprisingly, the dining room was intact—an oval table with four chairs sat in the center of the room. It was incredible that among this destruction there were still discernable objects. Why hadn’t Soledad and her son claimed some of these things? Scattered across the kitchen floor were broken ceramic cups, tarnished pots, and silverware. The wall next to the stove was stained with smoke and there was a hole carved out of the wood.

I spotted the corner of a golden tin box inside the hole. It was stuck with a piece of brick that had fallen on top, but with some effort, I slid it out. The lid was somewhat mangled. I removed it. Inside was a notebook and some pencils. I looked through the pages. It seemed to be a calligraphy or spelling notebook, as there were simple words and phrases repeated throughout. I skimmed through the pages until something caught my attention: a name written with clear penmanship.

Catalina is my best friend.

The sentence was repeated several times across the page. Catalina? Franco’s friend? I couldn’t imagine a friendship between two more discordant people. She was so pretty and sweet, a lady. And Franco, a brute, a man with no morals willing to kill a stranger for money.

And yet, I was holding the evidence that there had been, at least at one time, a friendship between them—the only evidence connecting one of my sisters to Franco. I couldn’t just ignore it because it seemed improbable or ludicrous to me.

Could their friendship have evolved into something else—into a romance? Was she the woman who drove him crazy? I couldn’t picture her asking him to kill me. I couldn’t imagine her in a relationship with this man. What would she have seen in him? Unless she just used him to get rid of me.

No, this relationship must have started years ago. His handwriting seemed childish and so did the sentence.