Missing Rose (9781101603864) Read Online Free PDF

Bye, then.”
    The artist merely waved and, without waiting for Diana to leave, became engrossed in his painting once again.
    Diana wasn’t going to mind the manners of a street artist. At least not today. But as she walked away with steady steps, she couldn’t help thinking how rude his behavior had been and how unlikable he was.

8
    A LL THAT WAS LEFT of the moth which had been flying around the room was a slight haze of smoke around the lamp and a faint smell of burning. Looking at the wisp of smoke, Diana wondered what had driven the moth to throw itself into the light.
    It must have followed an instinctive call to fly away from the dark, Diana thought. The urgency with which it flew must have been a rebellion against the gloom that enveloped it. A rebellion against uncertainty. It had chosen to melt away in the fire instead of a lifetime of flying in perpetual darkness.
    Wouldn’t opening and reading Mary’s letters be much the same as the moth throwing itself into the flames? Would it be an escape from the darkness she’d fallen into by ignoring her mother’s last wish? And, if so, to escape from such darkness, uncertainty and disloyalty, should she face the risk of being extinguished like the moth?
    Diana didn’t know what to think anymore. She didn’t know why she was in the dark, how she’d ended up there or whose fault it was . . . Was it her own fault for not acting upon her mother’s wish? Or her mother’s for placing such a heavy burden on her shoulders? Her father’s for splitting the family in two? Maybe the blame should be put on Mary since she was the one who’d sent that selfish note to her mother. Or maybe on God, who had taken her mother from her. Perhaps everyone was to blame, perhaps no one . . .
    She didn’t know the answer, yet she could feel how the reins of her life had long since slipped from her grasp. It was as if events beyond her control were determining her thoughts, feelings and actions; as if decisions about her life were being made somewhere, at some unknown place, and put into effect without her knowledge or consent.
    Was it fate?
    And if it were, could those strange words of the beggar who’d never spoken to her before also be a part of that fate? If she got up now, opened Mary’s letters and read them, would it be of her own free will? Or would she simply be obeying another command of fate which was dragging her toward the unknown? Perhaps the two were the same thing. She didn’t know.
    However, there was one thing she did know: she respected that moth.

    D IANA SUDDENLY GOT to her feet. She walked straight to her mother’s jewelry box, took out the key to the antique chest and went to the room where it stood. She opened the chest and found Mary’s letters wrapped in a piece of cloth. With the bundle in her hands, she returned to the living room.
    Sitting on the floor, her back against an armchair, she unwrapped the cloth. Inside it, she found four large and one smaller envelope, all in different colors. In the smaller envelope was Mary’s last note to her mother. The larger envelopes had all been numbered in her mother’s handwriting in the order she’d received them.
    The colors of the envelopes were, in sequence, red, green, white and silver. She noticed that the first three had been posted in São Paulo, while the fourth, as well as the one in the smaller envelope, were postmarked Rio de Janeiro.
    So Mary must have come to Rio, thought Diana. She suddenly remembered the old beggar’s words. “She comes from far away,” he’d said. “She’s not far away.”
    If Mary had come to Rio, then why hadn’t she come to see her mother? Could she still be here? Did she live in São Paulo?
    As Diana battled with such questions, she noticed that the silver envelope—the fourth one—was empty. The question of where the letter it had contained might