“I am right here, querida.” She eased me back down, then leaned over me, her fingertips curving over the sides of my face, tracking over each one of my features.
I blinked at her. “You’re okay?”
“I am okay.”
“Did Lucy…did she hurt you?” I whispered.
“No.”
I closed my eyes and saw my aunt’s protruding eyes, saw Evelyn hunched in a chair. I forced my lids up. My mouth tasted sour, and my body reeked of wet-dog. I stretched my arms and legs then sat up, slower this time, my cheek pulsing. I lifted my fingers and felt a patch of puckered skin.
Evelyn wrapped her hands around my bicep. Although I didn’t require her support, I let her guide me to the bathroom…I let her tend to me. She closed the lid of the toilet and sat me down. As she warmed the water, I peeled my t-shirt and shorts away. I didn’t remember putting them on.
When steam curled up from the shower nozzle, I stepped into the bathtub, sat, and raised my face, letting the hot water beat down on me. Evelyn squirted soap into her hands and cleaned my body. And then she rubbed shampoo between her palms and washed my hair. She lathered in conditioner next, her careful fingers working out the knots.
She rinsed and rinsed and then turned off the water. As she picked up a towel, I clamped my fingers around the rim of the bathtub and heaved myself up and out. She patted down my body and then my hair, and I felt like I was a toddler all over again. She forced me to sit back down on the closed lid and went to get me clean clothes: leggings and a tank top. I pulled both on. She dried my hair some more and then combed it out.
As I stood, the world spun a little, and my stomach rumbled as though it hadn’t been fed in days instead of hours.
“You need to eat something.” She steered me to the armchair that was creased and warmed from her body. “Sit here and don’t move.”
“I won’t.” I leaned my head back and shut my eyes, relishing the tranquility.
Sometime later, she was back with thick slices of chewy bread topped with thin slivers of turkey. I ate slowly, the food dropping into my stomach like clumps of blizzard snow. Evelyn pulled the sheets off my bed and tucked in new ones. For a long time, the rustle of fabric and the floorboards creaking under Evelyn’s lopsided footsteps were the only sounds inside the room. I thought about the day. About Lucy and Everest and Jeb. And that made me think of what my uncle had insinuated.
She was fluffing my pillows when I finally spoke. “Evelyn?”
“Yes?”
I peeled a piece of crust off the bread and shredded it into dark dust between my fingers. “Can I ask you something?”
Like an articulated toy, she straightened out. “Anything.”
“Is your real name…is it Evelyn?”
Even though her pupils were almost indistinguishable from her irises, I saw them pulse, or maybe I sensed them pulse. For seconds that stretched into full minutes, she stared at me. Then her gaze moved off mine, settling on a spot beyond my shoulder. Her long lashes swooped down and skimmed her pallid cheeks.
I hadn’t wanted to believe Jeb; I still didn’t want to believe him. But her evasion… “Who’s Gloria?”
The silence turned barbed. Slowly, she raised her lashes. Tears burned in her eyes as brightly as the stars blazing in the night sky behind her. The plate slid off my knees. It didn’t crack, but crumbs peppered the rug, and the remaining slices of turkey dropped like crumpled tissues.
She sat on the foot of the bed and linked her hands in her lap, her black hair falling around her lowered face.
“You’re Gloria, aren’t you?” I murmured at the same time as she said, “I am sorry.”
Heartache bloomed inside my chest. I hadn’t wanted my uncle to be right.
I blinked away the sudden blurriness. “Was it a coincidence we met?”
She shook her head.
I gripped the armrests.
Her lips trembled behind the fence of bottle-black strands draped around her face. “It does not change the way I feel about you, Ness.”
I studied the perfect arc of light cast by my nightstand lamp on my white wall. “Just tell me everything.”
Evelyn-no, not Evelyn-Gloriasat up straighter. “My name used to beGloria. I changed it to Evelyn so my husband wouldn’t find me.”
I frowned. Husband?
“I was born in Mexico, but I moved to the U. S. as a child. To pay for college, I took up housekeeping jobs. That is how I met…him. I married him for papers, and he married me because his grandmother refused to give him access to his trust fund as long as he was a bachelor.”
My gaze leaped off the wall and back onto her.
“The romantic in me believed that maybe we would fall in love. He was handsome and well-educated, but he had a lot of secrets. Dark secrets. He would spend most of his days locked in his office, and when he left the house, he would lock the door. I became so terrified of him that I confronted him.” Her mouth set in a grim line. “He told me that if I ever questioned him again…if I ever went into his office, he would have me deported, so I stopped prying and kept my distance. Well, as much distance as you can put between two people sharing a house.
“One day he forgot to lock his office door. I feared it was a trap and almost did not go inside, but I was desperate to know what sort of man I was living with. What if he was a serial killer? Or a terrorist?
“It wasa trap. He caught me before I could find anything, and then he blackmailed me. He said that if I wanted to stay in America, I had to do something for him.” She turned to look out the window. “He made me seduce a man. That man was Frank McNamara.”
Shock pinned me in my seat. “Frank?” The memory of their encounter before the music festival flashed inside my mind. And then the kiss he’d placed on her cheek earlier…
“You’re from here?” I croaked.
Without turning away from the window, she nodded. “I was so scared, Ness, that I did as my husband told me. Frank was a married man. Seducing him went against all of my beliefs.” She held a knuckle underneath her nose and drew in juddering breaths. “Frank fell for my act. But soon it was no longer an act.” She closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her pale cheek. “We fell in love, and I told Frank the truth. And it was terrible.”
She bit her lip that had started to tremble.
“After I told Frank the location of all the listening devices I had planted, he made me leave. I went back to the house I hated, to the man I detested. I only had months left to get my papers, but I could not stay so I packed my bags. My husband came home then. He already knew I had removed the surveillance equipment. I told him I was done. He said he would call the police, and I told him I no longer cared. I made the mistake of turning my back on him.”
She stretched her bad leg in front of her.
“He shot me. The bullet was meant for my heart, but a wolf attacked him, and he missed. And then Frank was beside me. I do not remember much, but I do remember something…something that did not make sense until a couple days ago. I remember seeing the wolf turn into a man. For years-decades-I thought it was a delusion brought on by loss of blood.”
Her voice broke on a sob and then on another. For a long moment, she wept.
“I had deceived Frank, spied on him, and yet he saved me.”
Every fiber of my being urged me to go over to her, but my muscles had gelled with shock.
“He took me to a man who fixed my leg as best he could, and then he drove me out of Colorado and into Arizona. He had a great aunt who lived in Tucson. He asked her to take me in, and she agreed. She was such a kind lady.”
Evelyn-Gloria-rubbed her hands together slowly, the same way she did when her palms were dusted in flour.
“Before he left, he got me new papers. I became Evelyn Monroe. I lived with his great aunt for many years, and during all those years, Frank visited only once. For her funeral.” She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep sigh. “Frank allowed me to live there, in his house, many more years. I cleaned stores and offices but never made enough money to pay him back for all he had done for me.
“He came back into my life six years ago. I thought he was bringing me news of my husband. That he had finally died.” She looked up at me. “But it was not that. He came for a favor, which I agreed to. I would do anything for this man.”