The taste of alcohol filled my mouth.
Aquilino removed a manila envelope from his briefcase, wiped his forehead and neck for good measure, and pulled out a stack of papers.
“Well,” he said. “Let’s talk about the issue at hand, Don Armand’s inheritance.”
CHAPTER 4
One week earlier
My mother always said that men were only useful when they were gone. After Cristóbal got lost in the Caribbean waters, the nostalgia of our lives together enveloped me like a cloak. There was not an hour, not a minute of the day, that I didn’t think of him.
I kept reliving those last moments on the deck as though thinking about them would change anything. I should have hit the man before he stabbed Cristóbal. I should have jumped behind my husband and saved him from drowning. I should have. I should have. And then, after I was done tormenting myself for what I didn’t do, I would try to convince myself that I did the right thing. I’d called for help immediately after Cristóbal’s head got swallowed by a wave. I’d pressured the captain to stop the ship. I’d volunteered to go with the search team in one of the lifeboats. （The captain, however, denied my request. It was too dangerous for a woman, he said.） I’d stayed on the deck until dawn, my gaze fixed on the unrelenting waters, hoping to catch a glimpse of my husband.
They’d searched for hours, shining bright lights on the water’s surface, calling out his name. But they couldn’t find him or the vile man who had killed him. The captain offered me the consolation that my husband must have died a quick death. He probably didn’t suffer, he said, with that wound you mention. He probably lost consciousness from the loss of blood.
Yes, that was my consolation. He must not have suffered.
Except that he never would’ve died had I not brought him to this wretched ship. Had I not fought with him that evening, he would’ve spent the night sleeping on top of the metal keys of his typewriter instead of in the bottom of the ocean.
Had I not, had I not.
I’d yelled at the captain when they stopped the search. I’d demanded they keep looking. I told him we were important people in Spain. Filthy rich. Plantation owners. We would pay him with gold, with land, if he found my Cristóbal. But when none of the yelling, the promises, or the threats worked, I begged. The man, his face tan, his mustache covering his upper lip, managed a sad smile and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. There’s nothing else we can do. Your husband is with Our Lord now.”
“How do you know?” I said, bitterly. His eyes widened a bit. I bet he’d never heard a blasphemy of this caliber coming from a Spanish woman before.
But instead of a look of reproach or a curt dismissal, he gently squeezed my shoulder and nodded.
The truth was I didn’t want to think about where Cristóbal might be right now. None of the possibilities sounded good. They were downright horrific. Decomposing at the bottom of the ocean. Eaten by sharks. Bloated. Purple. I shut my eyes. I’d rather think of him coming back to me, somehow reemerging from the water and climbing the ten, fifteen meters from the waterline to the deck.
How I longed to hear the tapping of his keys now, but his precious typewriter had fallen silent since Cristóbal’s disappearance, six torturous days ago. Had he thought about his novel in those last moments, about the fact that he would never finish it?
What I wouldn’t give to trip over his boots in the dark.
Yes, my mother had been right about men. You only appreciated their virtues after they were gone.
Straightening my back, I knocked on the captain’s door.
I’d never met a British person with a tan as deep as Captain Blake’s.
“Mrs. Lafont, please come in.”
By now, we’d become well acquainted with each other, but he still seemed reluctant to look me in the eye. He was the kind of man who was perfectly comfortable among other men, but terribly shy around women.
“How is the investigation going, Captain?”
“I’m glad you came, Mrs. Lafont, I wanted to talk to you about that. But please, have a seat.” He pointed at an ochre leather sofa in front of the desk. A distinctive scent of tobacco permeated the room.
I obeyed. “Did you find out who that man was?”
“I’m afraid not, ma’am.” He sat behind the cluttered desk; one side of his face partially covered by a globe. “We haven’t found a record of anybody that matches your description of that man. In fact”—his ears turned slightly red—“I’ve decided to close down the investigation and rule your husband’s death as an accident.”