Ashes Learned Human Names novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Ask My Brother

"Who was that woman?" Elvira said again from the doorway. "Her perfume is in my curtains."

"His stepmother," Lucia said. "She wants us at her gala on Saturday."

"Then we will go," Elvira said. "And I will wear my diamonds, and she will hate it."

Rafael stood between them with the envelope crushed in his hand.

"Lucia, I'll tell you everything."

"Before Saturday ends," Lucia said. "Before he says it for you. That's my term."

"Yes," Rafael said. "I swear."

On Saturday she left the gauze at home.

The scar ran from her temple to her collarbone, red and shiny, and she wore a dark green dress with her hair pinned up on the left side.

Elvira sat in her chair with her diamonds on and her hand on Lucia's arm.

Marta walked behind them in her church blouse and her one good skirt.

The ballroom of the Castellanos house held two hundred people and a string quartet.

The music stopped on the first violin.

Lucia kept walking.

She heard a woman near the bar say "Oh my God," and a man say "That's her," and then nothing at all, because nobody wanted to be the one who was seen staring.

Rafael came out of the crowd and took her other arm.

"You look like yourself," he said, low.

"That's the idea," she said.

Paulina was there too, in pink silk beside the champagne tower.

She would not meet Lucia's eyes.

Gabriel's mother glided up, with her gold bracelet and a tight smile.

"How brave," she said to the air near Lucia's cheek. "Everyone is so moved."

Elvira turned her tinted glasses toward the voice.

"You," she said, "will move away from my granddaughter."

The stepmother moved.

At nine o'clock, the quartet stopped, and Gabriel climbed onto the small stage by the piano with a champagne flute.

He wore a white dinner jacket, and he looked like every photograph in the foundation's brochures.

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