Page 58 of The Night We Became Strangers

Alicia

T he phone call came right after sunset. We’d just sat for dinner, Julio and I, when Delia burst into the dining room to say some mysterious caller was on the line saying it was very important that he speak to me.

I hadn’t heard his voice in eight years, but I immediately recognized his hoarse lojano accent. It couldn’t be him . He’d died that night.

“Polo?” Had I heard right?

“Yes.”

Trembling, I stared at the translucid sails of a ship painted in oils, hanging right in front of me. Agustín had loved this painting.

“We need to talk, Alicia,” he said.

He gave me some odd explanation about being in Perú all along, but now he was at a hospital in Quito, and he had something important to share with me. Julio wanted to come with me to see him, but I declined his offer. This was something I had to do by myself.

When I entered the hospital room, I was shocked to see Polo in that condition—a prematurely old man.

“Thanks for coming,” he said. “You look as radiant as ever.”

Of course, being away for so long, he had no idea how much I’d cursed his entire family since he left. Or what I’d done to his wife.

“What’s wrong with you?” I said, approaching the bed.

“Emphysema.”

I paused midstep. I’d heard it was a terrible illness with no cure. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s ironic, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“That the thing that is going to kill me is a consequence of my actions that night.”

What was I doing here? I didn’t need to add his guilt to mine.

“Have a seat,” he said, pointing at a chair by the bed.

As I approached him, I noticed something in his lap—a framed photograph. It was a group of people, but I couldn’t quite see their faces.

“We made a terrible mistake, Alicia. You and I.”

“Why do you say that?”

He extended the picture toward me.

“What is this?” I said, standing.

“My daughter just brought it to me.”

“Valeria?” I focused on the people in the photograph. It was a group shot of Polo’s theater group, Radio Voices on the Air . My eyes settled on Marisa’s pretty face. My God, she’d been so young then. My throat thickened. I couldn’t believe I’ve been hating her for this long.

“I remember this photo,” I said in an effort to speak without crying. “It used to hang by the radio booth.”

Polo nodded. “What else do you notice about it?”

“I don’t know. What am I supposed to notice?”

“Look at Beatriz.”

She was sitting in the front with her legs crossed, the same sculptural calves that made men turn their heads when she’d walked up and down the Crónicas building. What else was there to see? Just the same vile woman who’d been blackmailing me for years.

She’d called me shortly after the fire to tell me she knew what I had done to Marisa. After Agustín had sent me downstairs, Beatriz and him had tried to tend to Marisa, but it had been too late. Marisa had died from a gunshot to the chest—the gunshot I’d delivered.

Or so Beatriz said.

Then, when Agustín had attempted to carry Marisa outside to see if a doctor could help, a beam had fallen on top of him. Beatriz said she’d tried to pull him out, but the beam was too heavy, and she didn’t want to die, so she left the two of them there.

It was all my fault. And she was ready to tell everything to the police if I didn’t pay for her silence. She claimed her husband’s inheritance had barely lasted her a year after he died, and she didn’t want to have to sell her house to support herself.

And so, I’d been paying for years. Every month, Beatriz received a hefty check for her silence.

“Look closely,” Polo said.

I examined every detail in the photograph and that was when I realized what he wanted me to see. Beatriz was wearing a scarf around her neck and the wing of a dove stuck out from one of its folds, like the scarf I’d given Marisa.

“The scarf?” I said.

“Yes. When Valeria brought the photo today and pointed at the scarf, I remembered something. One time, we were rehearsing a radionovela and Beatriz was running a fever. She’d been coughing and sneezing all afternoon, so I told her to go home, but it was raining hard, and nobody could drive her home because the radionovela was about to start.

Well, Marisa removed the scarf from her neck and tied it around Beatriz’s head so she wouldn’t get wet.

I’d forgotten all about it until today.”

I felt as if someone had just slapped me. “What are you saying?”

“They weren’t lying, Alicia. They weren’t having an affair. Beatriz never returned the scarf. Beatriz was Agustín’s mistress, not our Marisa.”

I fell back on the seat, shocked, confused. That couldn’t be true. I couldn’t have been so wrong about her.

“But she admitted she loved him,” I said, weakly. What had I done? Not only had I—what?—killed my best friend, I’d been hating her for eight years for no reason . It had been so easy to blame her for the loss of my husband, of my home.

Unfairly.

“Marisa was too kind, too forgiving,” he said.

“I remember being surprised at how nice she’d been to Beatriz that day when just a week prior, Beatriz had yelled at her over the smallest thing and ended up throwing all kinds of accusations at her, saying she was tired of playing minor roles, of Marisa always getting everything she wanted.

We had no idea she’d felt all this venom toward Marisa—so much envy.

She’d even tried to come on to me once at a Christmas party.

” He shook his head. “I should’ve known better. ”

I broke down. The tears I didn’t shed at their funerals were now pouring out, without control, without measure.

Not for my husband, for my friend, for how unfair I’d been.

My friend, my sister, how could I have been so hateful, so unreasonable, so cruel to her daughter—to anyone associated with Marisa?

I cried for what seemed like hours right there, in front of Leopoldo, who watched me with compassion, with solidarity. He’d also been despising Marisa unfairly for eight years. And our jealousy had caused a tragedy that could never be repaired.

When I was done sobbing, I stood up, said goodbye, and left.

I knew exactly where I needed to go.