The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos Read Online Free PDF Page B

that we were swimming in the laguna. We had a fight in the water and we almost drowned,” she said.
    “Don’t be silly,” said Irene. “Why would best friends fight?”
    “I said I wished you were dead. But it’s not true.”
    “It was only a dream. Forget it. Now, listen, I want to tell you a secret. Remember the guy I introduced you to that day we
     met at the Hotel Macuto last year? The reason I came here with you is because he’s going to meet me here.”
    “When? When is he meeting you?”
    “Right now.”
    “Now?”
    “Yes, now. I’m supposed to walk about one hundred meters down the path into the forest. If anyone asks you where I am, say
     that I went for a walk, okay? Delay as long as possible.”
    “Okay.”
    “Promise?”
    “I promise.”
    Irene embraced her, saying she would write when she and her indio got settled. And Lily watched her walk into the forest.
     Then she fell back asleep, waking only when her parents emerged from the cabaña just before sunset.
    “Where is Irene?” her mother asked.
    “She went for a walk.”
    “Why is your hair wet?”
    Her father interrupted before Lily could answer. “Let her be, mi amor,” he said.
    Lily believed then that her father was special; that he could hear her thoughts and visit her dreams. She still believes it.
     That is why nearly twenty years later, as she fights against the doctor’s recommendation of a Cesarean in the hospital room,
     she is not surprised to see her father appear like a vision, to find herself in his arms, being carried out of the hospital.
     And so, at the age of thirty-four, she is finally forced to acknowledge that there are times when her father’s unpredictability
     has its advantages.

    Carlos Alberto pulls into the driveway, and Marta, having returned an hour earlier to a mysteriously empty house, opens the
     door with a furrowed brow. Though visibly shaken she quickly takes charge, guiding Carlos Alberto, who is carrying Lily, to
     the living room sofa, where he sits, still holding her too tightly against his chest. Marta touches the bruise on Lily’s forehead
     lightly, peers into her face. “What happened?” she asks.
    Lily closes her eyes; the burden of explaining is beyond her. Carlos Alberto answers on her behalf, “She fell and hurt herself.
     At the hospital they wanted to deliver the baby by Cesarean section, to be on the safe side, but she refused. And then...”
     He gestures wordlessly toward her father, Ismael, who stands framed in the doorway.
    Her mother says, “Lily wanted to come home and wait for Amparo to arrive before making any major decisions. It is only a matter
     of a day or two. In the meantime, Doctor Ricardo will come to check on her in the evenings. We’ll make up the daybed in the
     living room so that we can keep an eye on her and she on us. Come, Luz, you can help me.”
    The living room is the hub of the airy modern bungalow she has designed for herself and Carlos Alberto. It is her second favorite
     room, after the kitchen, with a high ceiling and large French doors leading to the patio and garden. In the living room she
     will never be alone and she will be able to see and know what is going on in the house. She realizes her decision to leave
     the hospital is virtually incomprehensible to Carlos Alberto, who thinks that doctors know everything. But she is certain,
     from the way her womb had clenched at the word
Cesarean,
that the doctor is wrong. She might not have had the strength to convince Carlos Alberto to take her away, might still be
     there, might at this very moment be under the surgeon’s knife, had her father not materialized out of nowhere, plucked her
     from the hospital bed, and simply spirited her out of the hospital. Suddenly, the thought of Dr. Ricardo Uzoátegui running
     after them waving assorted papers, in a panic over the breach in hospital check-out procedure, makes her want to laugh out
     loud, an impulse she controls out of loyalty to Carlos Alberto,