Engrasi sat up warily, abruptly removing her hands from her brother’s. He seemed not to realize that she’d withdrawn her confidence in him at the same time.
He kept talking. “People can be really nasty, and this is a tiny little town. Rosario realizes how something like this can hurt the family.”
Engrasi heard him clearly. He’d said “hurt the family,” not “hurt the child.” She responded with great caution. “I’m glad she sees that. That both of you see it.”
“That’s why she thought, why we both thought, that it would be best for Amaia to come home.”
There it was. Engrasi couldn’t believe her ears. And she hadn’t seen it coming. “What?”
“Rosario has been terribly unhappy being separated from her daughter. Those comments, the horrible things she said, they were just her way of defending herself. She felt people were criticizing her for not having her daughter living at home. Normally people would expect a girl as young as Amaia to be living with her family.”
Engrasi looked at her brother, but she was no longer listening to what he said. She realized how carefully this had been staged. His best suit, his unexpected appearance at her door, the elaborate prologue Engrasi knew was impossible for him to have prepared alone.
She looked again at her brother and saw him for what he was: An emissary. A puppet. Engrasi hadn’t spoken to Rosario for years, but Engrasi didn’t need any contact with Rosario to see the truth. Her studies in the psychology department seemed a thousand years ago now, but she recognized the characteristics of a psychopath. She was astonished at herself; she couldn’t believe she’d been so obtuse as to miss what was happening. Engrasi had underestimated that neurotic, malevolent woman, her power, her influence, and her ability to project her psychoses upon those around her.
Engrasi pressed her hand to her breast, trying to calm the acid roiling her gut. Her growing unease was so great she could hardly breathe. Not a single word about Amaia, no mention of the suffering the child had endured, or the banishment of a child now almost twelve years old, who’d been excluded from her home for nearly three years. Engrasi’s hands were trembling, so she hid them in her lap and admonished herself to regain her calm and analyze this. She sat mute and grave as she regarded her brother.
He eventually broke the silence. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I’m still processing this,” she replied as mildly as she could.
He seemed disappointed. “I thought you’d be glad, and I honestly can’t understand why you aren’t. The other day when we spoke, you were really hard on me, and I appreciate that. I discussed it with Rosario, and now I see things the way they really are.”
“The way she says they are.”
He continued as if he hadn’t heard. “I thought this was what you wanted.”
Engrasi shook her head in disbelief. “The only thing I want is to keep the child safe.”
Juan got up and came around the table. He leaned over and placed a conciliatory hand on her shoulder. “Sister, I’ll never be able to thank you enough for taking care of Amaia while Rosario was in such delicate health, but now my wife is healthy again.” His emphasis was borne of conviction.
Engrasi pushed his hand away and got to her feet. They stood face to face, almost touching. “No, Juan! Rosario is not healthy. Rosario will not be healthy as long as she lives.”
What happened next shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Juan’s face twisted in bitter triumph, as if he’d just confirmed something. He stepped back, not bothering to hide his anger. “Just as I expected!”
“What do you mean, Juan?” she asked, offended. “What were you expecting?”
“That’s exactly what Rosario told me you’d say.”
Engrasi shook her head. Her brother was an ass. She stepped forward the same two paces and confronted him anew. “And what exactly did she predict?”
He stumbled backward, intimidated. “Nothing . . .”
“No, no. Tell me!” she demanded. “I want to know what she’s thinking.”
Juan looked up. “She believes you’ve gotten too attached to the child . . .”
“Too attached? You mean more than is normal?” She pressed him with grim determination. “Are you really trying to say you think it’s possible to love this child too much?”
“You’re acting like you’re her mother . . . because you never had children of your own.”
Engrasi’s jaw dropped in astonishment.
“But you’re not her mother, and it seems to me like you’ve forgotten that.”
Engrasi looked at her brother as if he were a complete stranger. “She certainly coached you well.” Her voice dripped with contempt. “And you parrot every word.”
“Engrasi, you’d better just get used to the idea. The girl’s mother wants the child to come back home, and so do I.”
She got right in his face to make sure he couldn’t miss her determination. “No!”
He nodded spitefully, as if he’d been expecting that answer. “Rosario told me you’d refuse. She’s already consulted a lawyer. There’s nothing you can do. If you keep making things difficult, you’ll only end up wasting your time and money. The girl is our daughter and should be living at home.”
“This is her home,” Engrasi replied, “and it looks like you’ve forgotten why she’s living with me and what happened to make you bring her here.”
Juan answered without hesitation, “Any judge will understand that an ill mother couldn’t care for her daughter. We are making this difficult decision for the child’s own good. You knew the terms; you agreed that Amaia would live with you until Rosario was well again.”
Engrasi’s face tensed in fury. “No! You didn’t bring her to me because Rosario was sick. She’d been abusing her, humiliating her, and terrorizing her for months.”
“Rosario was in poor health,” he repeated, as if citing a mantra.
“And you, brother, didn’t do a damn thing about it. Nothing when Rosario forced her to wear that dead child’s clothes, and nothing when you saw her get up at night to go to the girl’s bed and threaten her. You did absolutely nothing when she chopped off the child’s hair with blunt scissors.”
Juan exploded. “Rosario was ill!” he shouted.
Engrasi refused to be intimidated. “You did nothing, because you thought it was better not to see. You chose to wait, to wait until it was too late. Until she was just about to—”
“It was an accident!” he yelled.
“It was not!” she shouted with all the strength she could muster.
Juan closed his eyes and shut his mouth. When he finally spoke, his voice was stifled by desperation. “Yes, it was, Engrasi. I’ve thought about it a lot, and it had to have been an accident.”
Engrasi stalked to him and poked her finger in his chest. “That is not what you told me that night, when you carried Amaia here. No, Juan. An ‘accident’ is what you said it was when the people saw you come out of the bakery carrying an unconscious child. You said the girl slipped, fell in the mixing bin, and hit her head. That’s the stinking lie you had to make up, and you’ve finally convinced yourself it was the truth.” She accompanied every word with a fierce jab of her finger. “But when you brought the child here, you sat right there.” She pointed to the staircase. “And you confessed! You told me what had been going on. You may have forgotten, but I haven’t.”