Gloria: The Name I Never Was novel · Chapter 1 of 12
Chapter 1: The Prayer Books
I was twenty-seven years old, five years married to a saint, and that afternoon I heard him call me a sham.
I went up to the library of the retreat house with a tea tray, like every Friday.
The door was half open.
My husband, Tadeo Echeverría, was on the phone with his back to me, facing the window that looked out over the channel.
The people of Chiloé called him the aristocratic monk.
He had lived four years as a lay brother in a Benedictine monastery, and he still walked as if every step were a prayer.
"Gloria's already been on TV, yes," he was saying. "She looks radiant."
There was a silence.
"Am I going to keep pretending with Iliana?"
I froze in the hallway, the tray trembling in my hands.
"I can't marry Gloria. That doesn't matter anymore. But as long as Iliana is with me, she can't get close to Gloria's happiness."
He laughed softly, with that calm laugh I had believed came from peace.
"It's the only thing I can do for her."
I set the tray down on the floor without a sound.
I leaned against the wall and covered my mouth with both hands.
Five years earlier, on the day of my graduation, my first love, Álvaro, had promised to marry me.
Instead, he walked up on stage and asked someone else for her hand—Gloria, the Ruiz heiress, my classmate.
I stayed sitting in the scholarship row with my cap on my lap.
That same afternoon, Tadeo, the foundation's patron, came up and took my hands.
In front of everyone, he told me he loved me.
I believed him.
Any woman would have believed him.
By the time Tadeo hung up, I was already gone.
I waited until he went downstairs to pray with the guests.
Then I went back to his desk.
On the shelf were his prayer books, the ones with leather covers.
He kissed them before opening them, and I had never dared to touch them.
I opened the first one.
In the margin of every page, in his monk's handwriting, there was a line written in pencil.
"May Gloria be freed from her obsessions, may she find peace in body and soul."
I turned the page.
"May Gloria obtain everything she desires, may her love know no worries."
Another page.
"Gloria, we are not destined in this life. I only wish that in the next one we can walk together."
I opened the second book, the third, the fourth.
They all had her name.
Not once, mine.
I sat down on the floor with the open books all around me.
I didn't cry.
I had gotten used to sleeping next to a man who prayed at four in the morning.
I thought his coldness was holiness.
Now I knew who he was praying for.
Behind the desk there was a safe built into the wall.
The code was the date of our wedding.
That detail hurt more than everything else.
Inside there was money, his passport, his father's watch, and a brown cardboard folder with a typed label.
"San José Clinic. Maternity. 1999."
I didn't understand what that was doing there.
I was afraid to open it, and I didn't know why.
I put it in my bag along with my passport, the only document Tadeo had never taken from me.
I closed the safe.
I put the books back in their place.
I came down the stairs with a meek smile, as always, and served tea to twelve retreat guests.
Tadeo touched my shoulder as he passed.
"You look pale, Iliana," he said in his deep voice. "Rest."
"Yes, Tadeo."
That night, while he prayed on his knees, I locked myself in the bathroom with the phone.
I called a number a guest had left me years before, in case I ever needed it.
A woman in Castro who made papers for eight hundred thousand pesos and never asked questions.
"I need an identity," I whispered. "One with no past."
"For when?"
I looked at the dark channel through the window, the wind stirring the black waves.
"For Saturday," I said. "There's going to be a storm."
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