The shy and reserved Marcela, a young Mexican woman, is shattered by the deaths of the her brother, Raul, and fiance, Alberto, in a shootout with the police. The police claim they were running drugs. She knows that is a lie.
Unable to rebuild her life in Mexico, Marcela crosses the border and comes to Los Angeles for a new start. She stays with an aunt who recounts seeing at a distance a man she mistook for Raul. Although the coffin at his funeral was closed, Marcela refuses at first to believe her brother might be alive—she doesn’t want to relive her grief—but then she glimpses the same man. She feels compelled to search for him in order to discover the truth of what happened. Raul's enemies capture her and try to use her against her brother. Marcela endures and survives.
When Marcela travels into the Sierras of northern Mexico where cartels are battling over the control of opium fields to find her brother, she is unsure about the man she will encounter, her feelings towards him, and whether he will receive her as his beloved sister or an enemy.
Chapter One
Would he allow his heart to break just this once?
He stood at the door of her darkened room. She was asleep. The moonlight wavered as a slight breeze rustled the window curtains. The cathedral tower bell tolled three times followed by three echoes. A strain of mariachi music found its way through the empty streets. He felt heaviness in his chest as he looked down at his sister’s face, which had recovered in sleep its childlike innocence. He wanted to approach and sit beside her bed. He wanted to hold her protectively like he had done so many times when they were children. And he ached to hear the words she always found to sustain him.
He almost said her name, Marcela, but then recalled the signs that he had seen in Carmelo’s men—the false affability and the shamefaced avoidance. Earlier that day, Alberto had failed to show for the rendezvous. The roads out of the town were now blocked. He had no doubt what this meant. Odds were that tomorrow he would die. Die because of her.
And if he got beyond the wall of death separating tomorrow from the rest of his days, he would have to live for them.
Two years ago, she had asked him to take her to the Indians in the mountains, the Puman people of their maternal grandmother. He agreed, and there it had begun. Marcela had been happy and excited about their little adventure, forgetting her natural shyness and reserve for a few days
He remembered the villagers surrounding them in a small field near where the massacre had taken place—thirty or so, wearing bright colored blouses and serapes over their white tunics. Most held machetes or atlatls—sticks that slung feathered darts—a few brandished ancient rifles.
He remembered the bodies lying on the grass in front of the poor adobe huts. He heard the question in their dialect and then repeated haltingly in Spanish: “Are you like the others?”
Marcela was kneeling over a little boy, her hands underneath his head and legs as if she wanted to cradle him, but she didn’t because the child was beyond any comfort she could give.
“Are you like the others who did this?” They demanded of him.
“No, I’m not like those who did this,” he replied to the question in their dialect. “Cowards kill women and children. I’m not a coward.” He turned slowly, making eye contact with each of them and added, “Fools leave those alive who will take vengeance. I’m not a fool.”
Marcela stood, oblivious of the threat to her life. She asked: “Raul, how can this happen?”
“We must go,” he had urged her. “They will take care of their own.”
“We can’t just go. We must call the police.” She spread her arms, the gesture encompassing the site of the massacre.
“I will talk to Carmelo when we get back.” He would have said anything, truth or lie, to convince her to leave.
“Raul, how can this happen?” Her words now sounded more like a plea than a question. When he struggled for a reply, she asked softly, “Can Carmelo do something?”
“Trust me, I will see justice done.” He walked up to her and took her hand.
For a moment, her face showed disbelief and despair.
“Trust me to do the right thing,” he reassured her and taking her other hand held both to his chest.
She nodded indicating she would.
Since then, Marcela smiled less, going deeper into herself, guarding her feelings carefully as if she were afraid of them.
A month later he returned to the village to see justice done as he had promised her.
Raul walked to the bed and leaned over and whispered, “Marcela.” Years ago, he would have touched her shoulder to wake her, and she would have opened her eyes unafraid because she knew his touch and would sit up to listen to his dreams or what was troubling him.
“Marcela.”
Her chest heaved with an unconscious sigh.
“Sweet Marcela, did you trust me in the end or did you betray me?”
She stirred.
Fearful of the answer, he straightened and walked out of the room, his heart not quite broken.
Chapter Two
The brothers attended Raul’s funeral. Heriberto and Carmelo Irquidi, Mesilla’s mayor and chief of police, were large, elegant men, who wore their power as comfortably as they wore their Stetson hats and silver inlaid boots. They were practiced funeral attendees. On arriving at the dim cemetery on that warm cloudy day, the brothers’ faces carried the pious expression of respect for the newly dead. Each laid on the coffin a huge ornate wreath, which made the flowers left by the other mourners seem poor and inadequate.
On seeing the Irquidi, Marcela had a fit of shivering despite the mugginess of the afternoon. During the reception, she retreated to a corner of the hall. A sticky presence inserted itself next to her. It was Mario Valdez who claimed to have been Raul’s most loyal friend. He couldn’t stop shaking his head and with his hot tongue making the sound, “Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Why didn’t you die instead of them? Marcela screamed in her thoughts and slid along the wall away from him.
Mario followed and breathed into her ear, “Tsk, tsk, tsk. You, your mother and I are the only true mourners here. Tsk, tsk, tsk.”
“Leave me alone,” Marcela whispered.
“Pobrecita,” he said and left, winding his way through the guests towards the door.
The brothers made the rounds saying appropriate consolatory words to her family. It maddened Marcela to see her parents accept Carmelo and Heriberto’s regrets and compliments as if it were an honor to be acknowledged by them. She bit her lip and longed to do to them harm.
The body of Alberto, her fiancé, had lain next to Raul in the ravine. On seeing his corpse riddled with bullets, Marcela felt a pain she imagined as intense as what a mother would feel at the loss of a child. Alberto had an innocence about him she always wanted to protect. However, by the time she attended his funeral, the grief had diminished to a dry sadness. The flat dull emotion seemed almost a kind of betrayal to the man she had promised to marry. After all, as children, they had played so often together, and they always had treated each other with a special shy tenderness.
For Raul, who ran risks as easily as he breathed, to die in such a manner was no surprise, and initially, Marcela’s grief had been muted. She had warned him and begged him to not be so careless of danger. Served him right for ignoring her pleas was Marcela’s bitter first thought at the sight of his body face down in the mud of the ravine. Now as Marcela watched Carmelo and Heriberto smoothly ingratiate themselves with the people who had loved Raul, she silently raged. She could not suppress the feeling that all her care and love for her brother over the years had ended in futility and now was buried in the coffin with him.
Carmelo, apparently noticing her distress and perhaps mistaking it for grief, came up to Marcela and put his arm around her and said, “I’m so sorry. I knew you were very close to Raul.”
A cry died in her throat. “Please…” Marcela wanted to beg him to stop. Where his fingers had touched her on the shoulder burned. She furiously suppressed her tears, and then lost her balance. As the ground slipped from beneath her feet, Carmelo caught her. He helped her to a bench where she could sit, and he whispered smooth comforting words into her ear. He then returned to his Heriberto’s side, and they continued giving their sincere condolences.
“I will no longer tolerate this,” Marcela whispered to herself, heart and soul in revolt. “I will not… I will not.
Chapter Three
After the funeral, Marcela was put to bed. Her mother closed the curtains and gave her a mild tranquilizer. The drug took the edge off her grief, and she fell into a fitful doze. But the sedative ran its course, and five hours later, Marcela returned to the unlimited pain of consciousness. She tossed and turned in the hot sheets, holding a damp forearm over moist eyes, minutes passing with painful difficulty like flakes chiseled from hard stone.
Marcela thought she would burst, go mad and let out the cry that had been building up inside her since the massacre two years ago, except at the most unendurable moment of the crisis, the remedy occurred to her—a course of action that promised relief and escape. She approached the idea skittishly, fearfully—like a starving wild animal approaches a hand offering food. It was impossible, yet it was the only way, yes, the only way to set the world right. And with the two loves of her life dead, she had nothing to lose.
She would murder Carmelo Irquidi, the chief of police. This very night she would commit the act. In revenge? Marcela would not call what she was going to do revenge. Nothing had made sense since she held that dead Puman boy in the Sierra foothills, and nobody had cared. Now with Alberto and Raul’s deaths, the heart had been torn out of her world, and she could not put it back, and nobody really cared. But Marcela could show she cared. Revenge was an act of hate. Revenge to put things right could also be an act of love.
Carmelo had refused to investigate the massacre because he claimed to have never met a Puman Indian who told the truth. Raul believed it simply wasn’t convenient for Carmelo, inconvenience being determined by how much money he had received as a payoff. Marcela had insisted that there must be people in government, State or Federal, who would care, who would investigate and seek justice.
“They all say they seek justice,” Raul replied. “Some are lying when they claim that, some are telling the truth. Good luck finding out which are which.” Raul then set out to help the Puman himself, going into the foothills and mountains for several weeks every other month to do what he called his business.
Raul had a following among the people of the altiplano. Carmelo couldn’t simply crush him like an ordinary citizen of Mesilla, so he had laid his trap carefully and waited patiently for his opportunity. When the trap was sprung, Alberto—who had found his way into Marcela’s well-guarded heart—was also caught. Carmelo had ordered his men to gun them down, and then he brazenly asserted that the boys had been killed in a shootout after resisting arrest on the suspicion of murdering a family of drug dealers. “I could have fixed the problem if they had only come to me,” Carmelo had whispered into the rumor mill. A thorough and damning lie nobody believed.
But the people were too frightened to protest or they were beholden to the Irquidi or didn’t invest anger in what they couldn’t change. Yet, they all knew nothing happened in Mesilla without Carmelo or Heriberto’s permission.
She watched the hours pass with anticipation. Finally, when she was certain her family had fallen asleep, Marcela rose. Quiet and serene, this night was different than all the others since Raul’s death. Even on the eve of the funeral, there had been gunfire and sirens as if half the town were celebrating a murderous carnival.
Marcela quickly dressed, passed into the kitchen and from the cutlery drawer extracted the large knife her mother used to butcher sheep and goats. She held it up to the moonlight diffusing through the window curtains, marveling at the cold glint of the blade and the murderous weight of the object in her hand. The tactile reality of the tool of vengeance made her grief diminish. Marcela left her house through a side door. Her skin tingled, even though the air had the warm moist quality of human breath.
Marcela traversed the ghostly streets of Mesilla. The large knife which she awkwardly carried made her feel conspicuous as if the people in the houses could see through the walls or in their dreams what she was doing. She tried to hide it once beneath her blouse but gave up when the point nicked the underside of her breast. Once Marcela heard a car engine on a nearby street. Twice another person’s footfalls spooked her, and she stopped and listened, her heart caught in her throat.
On each occasion Marcela halted, the hair on the back of her neck prickled as if the gaze of an unseen observer was rubbing against it, and the sound of a low sobbing came to her ears, which faded when she tried to fix its location. Marcela told herself that she was being deceived by the echo of her own footfalls and the projection of her own grief. So she persevered, passing beyond the town into the countryside on a dark rural road.
As Marcela approached her goal, annoyingly, the doubts she had hitherto suppressed found their voice. Turn back, little fool! Turn back!
She tried ignoring this plea for self-preservation by humming to herself.
The doubts cried louder and more insistently: Turn back! Turn back.
No; I made a promise I cannot break, she argued. A promise to myself. Tonight I murder Carmelo Irquidi.
Marcela pressed on down the road until she could discern in the cold pale moonlight the dark outlines of Carmelo’s mansion. The police chief lived like a feudal lord in a great adobe manor erected on the summit of a hill surrounded by pastures and fields. He referred to this home as “my castle” and called his fieldworkers and servants “my children.” He rarely had to reprimand his children for not fulfilling their obligation to him because implicit in his person was a ruthless authority that demanded obedience.
As Marcela climbed the long driveway to the mansion, she began to pant heavily, and in her sweaty slippery hands, the knife became difficult to hold. Suddenly, a fit of shivering ran through her like an electric current. She stopped. It passed. A dozen steps later, the shivering returned.
Marcela now had to exert a great effort of will to not throw the knife away and sneak back to the safety of her house. But she would not be able to bear the shame of giving in to her fear and acting like everybody else who had suffered at the hands of the Irquidi. Carmelo had presided over Raul and Alberto’s deaths, maybe he even had personally fired the bullets that killed them. He had calculated the decision coldly and without regret. Why couldn’t she commit the same sort of act with an equally cool disregard of life?
Before Marcela resolved this conundrum she arrived at the front door, the great panel of polished oak confronting her with the finality of the lid of a coffin. No one had seen her thus far. The chorus of doubts rose desperately trying to deafen her resolve. She could turn back. Once inside, she was committed—forever. Marcela lightly caressed the blade of the knife with her thumb.
“Must be done,” she whispered and grasped the door handle.
Unexpectedly, Marcela now found herself confronted by a host of practical problems. She hadn’t considered the tactical difficulties of murdering a man in his house. First: where would she find him? At this hour, Carmelo would probably be asleep, but where was his bedroom? How many dark, potentially occupied rooms would she have to visit before she happened on his? And if she found his room without rousing anybody, and if she was able to tiptoe up to his bed without awakening him, there was the second dilemma concerning the best way to take human life with a large butcher knife. Should she stab him in the heart or cut his throat?
Marcela shuddered at the image of that fat gaping throat.
Enough of these futile questions that want to turn me into a coward, she told herself. She believed in fate, and his death was either fated or not. She began to turn the handle. It resisted. Was it locked? Why hadn’t she taken into account such an obvious obstacle as this? How idiotic for her terrible resolve to be thwarted merely by the lack of a key.
Marcela nearly laughed out loud from relief. Throw your knife away and run, little fool! Self-preservation shouted loudly and triumphantly. Resolutely, for the sake of verifying her excuse to flee, Marcela twisted the knob with all her strength. Her heart sank as it gave, and the door swung open.
She took a step forward into the darkness, and her heart leaped into her throat when she felt a cold metallic pressure on the back of her neck. The gun barrel was then angled and pushed into the base of her skull. Marcela turned until out of the corner of her eye she could see the round slightly askew head and the large permanent grin of the man who held the gun. She knew him. Thin and long-limbed like a racing dog, he had earned two epithets: “Carmelo’s hound” for his ability to track people, and “the piano tuner” for his method of killing. He never spoke because he had lost his tongue as a child.
The knife tumbled from her hand.
Carmelo’s hound lowered the gun, shoved her inside and closed the door. A light came on at the top of a wide staircase where Carmelo stood swathed in a purple robe.
“Very good, Gaspar. Take her to my study. I want to interrogate her, and then we’ll decide what to do with our unexpected guest. Maybe she can also pay a visit to you and the boys later tonight.”
With several small, almost gentle, shoves, Gaspar directed her into a room off the entryway, switched on the light and shut her in. Marcela found herself in what appeared to be a combination of armory and office.
The first item that caught her eye was a jeweled dagger on the massive oak desk in the center of the room. Small and sharp with the hilt spreading at the end like a pair of arching wings, the knife was evidently used to open correspondence, yet wasn’t so small to exclude its use as a weapon. The second object that drew her attention was the half-open door of a glass cabinet containing a gun rack with four rifles. Suddenly, Marcela became aware of many other weapons: three whips coiled like snakes occupied the corners, and various antique swords, muskets, and battle-axes were mounted on the walls. It seemed as if Carmelo was daring her to replace her clumsy knife with a more lethal tool.
Marcela picked up the jeweled dagger and gingerly touched the blade which was so sharp it drew blood before she felt the prick. Was Carmelo so careless with her because he trusted in her lack of nerve? She carefully put the dagger back on the desk. A photograph of Raul and Alberto’s corpses in the ravine caught her eye. Marcela looked away to avoid seeing the mutilation caused by the bullets. Fear and nausea rose from the pit of her stomach. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. She fell into a chair, held herself, closed her eyes and rocked slowly back and forth.
She was still curled up when a quarter hour later Carmelo entered, draped in the same robe, darkened purplish skin ringing his deep-set eyes, his broad face shaded with a day’s growth of beard. Carmelo breathed laboriously as he circled around the desk and sat down. At this moment of confrontation, Marcela did not doubt the rumors about his secret perversions, his violations of young women, and his pleasure in torturing enemies.
“Admiring my collection of weapons?” Carmelo inquired when Marcela desperately glanced at the open gun cabinet. “This is a fraction of what I possess. Upstairs, I have another three rooms and an attic full of my acquisitions—antique and modern. My collection is my pride and passion. The beauty of a well-crafted instrument of death is the complement of the beauty of a woman’s body: the power to take life and the power to bring life into the world are to me equally intriguing.”
Marcela tried to hide her trembling hands by pressing them on her thighs. She wanted to respond, but the whirlwind in her mind prevented her.
Carmelo studied Marcela, taking his time, letting his eyes absorb her like an artist studying a model. “So you came here to kill me?” The inflection in his voice was more paternal than hostile.
“Yes,” Marcela whispered harshly seeing no point in lying.
“Because you believe I’m responsible for the deaths of Raul and Alberto.”
“Yes, and the deaths many others,” Marcela replied defiantly and straightened in the chair.
“You realize I must punish you.”
“What does it matter?” She tried to meet his eyes with a steady gaze.
Carmelo smiled at her the same way an adult smiles at a child who has just said something nonsensical. “Brave lies. Your hands and your face tell me it does matter to you.”
Marcela glance at the dagger regretfully.
“Why didn’t you go to Puerto Vallarta like Alberto wanted?” Carmelo asked. “Don’t look so surprised. I have found it convenient to own the travel agency so I was aware of his purchase of the bus ticket.”
“Alberto forgot I hadn’t finished my classes yet.”
“I think he wanted you away from the danger.”
“The tickets were a gift.”
“Why can’t you admit that Alberto and Raul feared for your safety? It’s quite normal to put a precious thing out of harm’s way before going into battle.” Carmelo shook his head as if baffled by Marcela’s denseness. ”You realize Raul deserved what he got. An eye for an eye, a death for a death.”
“But he is not the one who murders. You know that.”
“I don’t know that, and beyond the demands of biblical justice, your brother had a problem which sealed his fate in the game he was playing. Many men, good and bad, envy my power. They would trade places with me in order to use it for good or bad, but they have no idea what power really is. It can only be exercised by men who can keenly appreciate the same quality in others. To get to my position, I had to eat shit many times, and I still eat it when I need a favor from a man who has more power than me. Raul had difficulty with the dish and gagged on it.”
“You murdered him because he was too proud to grovel and too good to do your bidding, and you used the Altamira brothers’ deaths as an excuse.”
“Proud?” Carmelo picked up the photograph of the corpses and turned it towards Marcela so she could see the bodies lying in the mud. “Your brother was proud and ambitious and condescending. I don’t kill men for those attributes. It’s touching you believe Raul was good, however, I certainly didn’t kill him because I believed he was morally superior to me. In fact, I didn’t kill him at all, but when I learned he had become an adversary, I allowed his death to take place because that is what you do with adversaries. It was a quick merciful death, and it was inevitable. Raul was too young to know how to handle power or handle men. There are some men you have to embrace like a woman you love, and there are others you have to hold at arm’s length like a venomous snake. With a few, you have to do both at different times.”
The more Marcela tried to control her trembling in her knees, the greater it became. “And Alberto who never harmed a soul in his life just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
“Yes, Alberto was at the wrong place at the wrong time because he associated with the wrong person. Yet, he wasn’t…”
At this point, Carmelo was interrupted by an old woman who wandered into the room, humming tunelessly. She reminded Marcela very much of her own mother—having the same sunburned leathery skin that as it aged made her appear more Indian and less European, and the same body made shapeless by the bearing of many children. The old woman glanced at them with a bewildered expression, and then her eyes focused.
“Carmelo, who is this girl?”
“She’s Marcela, the sister and the fiancée of the boys who died,” Carmelo replied gently. “She has come to me for consolation. Marcela, this is Alicia, my wife.”
Marcela nodded.
“Would Marcela like a cup of coffee?”
Marcela shook her head.
Alicia began to speak more to the air than to Marcela. “My poor dear, it was so tragic. I met your brother a few times. I will not forget him. No, I won’t. He looked like a young Aztec god except for his blue eyes. So many young die. I never forget any of them.” She tapped her forehead. “I can still see the boy with a nice smile who shot himself accidentally, and that beautiful young man killed by the brothers of his girlfriend in a vendetta. So terrible! They cut him into small pieces and plowed him into their field so he couldn’t be found. And the girl who drowned. She used to come to our house selling flowers. Pity—she had the prettiest flowers. So many young deaths and we old people still live on uselessly. So many…”
“Go back to bed, Alicia. I’ll be there soon.” Carmelo stood up and kissed her on the top of her head as if she were a child.
Alicia gave Carmelo a raspy kiss on the proffered cheek, bowed to Marcela saying, “I’m so sorry, my dear. Your brother was such a fine boy.” She turned and shuffled out the door. A moment later Marcela heard her ascending the stairway mumbling, “She had the prettiest flowers, I always wanted to tell her, the prettiest…”
Carmelo paused, apparently listening to his wife’s ramblings until they faded. He then continued, “Excuse my dear wife. Alicia became my bride at fifteen. She bore me twelve children, the first eight of which didn’t survive because we were too poor to afford medical care. Grief has made her old and a little crazy, and that’s unfair because I’m still a vigorous man. The only way I can make up for Alicia’s suffering is to provide for her and our children the best in my means. I’m not sure whether she realizes it or cares anymore.”
Carmelo rubbed his forehead as if he were trying to rub out a memory, then continued: “You must understand that your brother not only betrayed Heriberto and me but had also made many enemies. They posed a threat to all of us. I don’t really matter much. I’ve beaten and whored my way from being a poor man to a rich man. Mesilla and my loved ones do matter. If I were gone, who would protect you and your family from Raul’s enemies? Who would keep my family from ending up back in the shantytown where Alicia and I started out? Seeing my wife and children suffer would give certain persons great satisfaction.”
Carmelo paused until he could lock Marcela’s eyes in a stare, then continued: “I liked Raul. I even admired his pride and arrogance. It wasn’t a matter of law and justice, or even of vengeance for his disloyalty. In the end, I was protecting those I care for. That is all. I would have personally killed your brother a thousand times over and Alberto too if he were in the way to prevent Alicia from feeling another ounce of pain in her life and also to protect Mesilla from his kind.”
You’re incapable of any human feeling, Marcela thought, and then burst out: “I don’t believe you. They did not kill the Altamira brothers. It was all a setup. You killed them and you killed all the others, then you murdered Raul and Alberto because they were so much better than you. They weren’t corrupt; they weren’t cruel; they weren’t greedy.”
“And now they aren’t alive—so whether Raul and that other boy were noble or fools and murderers has no meaning. I suggest you forget the dead.”
“Does it matter what I remember or forget? I know how you operate. You’ll turn me over to your men, and after they’re through, you’ll kill me and say I was dealing drugs and murdering people.” She started to bend over to weep, but then with an effort pressed her back to the chair.
“You’re too pretty for my boys. I can't spoil them. But…” Carmelo picked up the jeweled dagger, weighed it, then suddenly seized Marcela’s hand, jerked it towards him and gave two slashes on the underside of her forearm. Blood immediately began to well up over her skin. Marcela was too shocked to make a sound.
“Those scars are to remind you of your stupidity in coming here,” Carmelo said and then let go.
Marcela put her right hand over the deep cuts ineffectively trying to staunch the flow of the blood. “I’m bleeding too much.” She felt absurd saying those words.
“You’re lucky.” Carmelo put down the dagger and picked out the bus ticket from among the papers on his desk. “I couldn’t let you leave without exacting a price for threatening me and my family, but I won’t hurt you anymore. I believe your brother once loved you and wanted to protect you the same way I love and want to protect my dear ones. I will respect that as his dying wish—for now.”
In a sudden surge of anger and courage, Marcela declared, “Better to kill me if you think you can scare me off, finish the job because if you don’t I’ll come back and…”
“Don’t say it!” Carmelo picked up the dagger again, leaned over the desk and pressed the point of the blade into her nostril, apparently with the intention of ripping upwards.
Tears formed in her eyes. Marcela couldn’t tell whether her face was a grimace or a mask, but at that moment she was aware she had been broken.
Carmelo whispered harshly: “Don’t say it even though you wish to murder me more than you wish to live. You may not care about your life now, but you will in a month or a year. Be thankful I’m letting you go with only those scratches. Be thankful I have taken the place of your brother. I’m your protector, whether you want it or not. But I will not tolerate ingratitude, and, if you cross me again, you won’t find me so patient or forgiving. If I decide you’re becoming a problem, then I’ll kill you as easily as I pick my nose or step on an insect. Now you must forget the dead, or they’ll rule your life. Their ghosts will come back and drag you down into their hell. Forget them. Forget them little girl, so you can live.”
Marcela was afraid to breathe. The blood was still flowing between her fingers, staining her jeans and forming a small pool between her feet on the floor. She had no courage or presence of mind left. Sick and faint, she just wanted to get away and sleep for a thousand years.
Carmelo must have assumed she was still defying him because he continued with a raised voice, “Have I made myself understood? Do not come back here, little girl. If you step on this property again, I’ll kill you. Can I be clearer? I’ll kill you. Perhaps I’ll do it so quickly that you’ll cease to be before you are aware of death, or perhaps, so slowly that you’ll regret your life a hundred times over before you give it up.” He removed the knife blade from her nostril. “Now, get out. Gaspar will drive you home.”
Before he took her home, Gaspar poured antiseptic on her arm, which caused more pain than the cuts. Then he bandaged the wound and gave her a pill that dulled all sensation.
Perhaps because the scars reminded her of Carmelo’s advice and threat, Marcela tried to distance herself from the memories of Alberto and Raul over the next four years. And with time, her grief for Alberto became one small empty room in her heart she would visit every so often and weep softly. Her grief for her brother, on the other hand, was like a malarial fever that lay hidden and then unexpectedly would appear and rage in her consciousness for a day or a week.