Page 26 of The Lion in the Library

“And the children?”

“They don’t know anything. Luz went to school with six hair clips in and Pedro got his red car back, and as far as they’re concerned it was a perfectly ordinary Wednesday.”

“Good.” Another pause. Then, careful and deliberate, as though choosing each word: “He doesn’t have a case, Estrella. You know that.”

“I know.”

“And whatever he’s trying to do — whatever this is about — it’s not about Luz. It’s about you. About the photograph. About the fact that you’re happy and he’s not responsible for it.”

The accuracy of this was so clean it almost made me laugh. “My mother said approximately the same thing.”

“Your mother sounds like a very sensible woman.”

“She is. She also said she’d seen the dancing photograph and that you look at me the way my father looks at her.”

A beat. When he spoke again there was something different in his voice — quieter, more careful. “What do you think?”

I looked at the refrigerator from where I sat. At the drawing with its four stick figures, the tall one in glasses, the careful letters underneath. Nuestro Leo.

“I think,” I said, “that the enchiladas are still happening on Thursday if you want to come.”

A warmth in his voice, unmistakable. “I’ll be there.”

“Good,” I said.

And I sat for a moment after we had said goodbye, the receiver still in my hand, thinking that my mother was right — not about Roberto, about whom she had always been right — but about the warm house and the cold and the fact that at some point you had to open the door.

I was beginning to think I had.

HEADLINES

LEO

Hunter called me at the training facility at half past two, which was how I knew it was bad.

Hunter did not call during training. He had a policy, established in my second year at Real León and never broken since, that football hours were football hours and his interventions would wait. The fact that he was calling now, before I had even finished my warm-down, meant that whatever had happened had moved past the point where waiting was an option.

I stepped off the pitch and found a telephone inside.

“It’s in the afternoon editions,” he said, without greeting. “Three papers. The photograph is from the park — the two of you on the bench with the children. You have your arm around her.”

I thought back to the Saturday at the park. I had not been thinking about photographers. I had been thinking about how Luz had just informed me, with complete seriousness, that her stuffed lion had accepted a position as official park warden and would be conducting inspections. I had not been performing the appearance of a man not being photographed. I had been, simply, not being photographed. Or so I’d thought.

“How bad is the headline?”

Hunter read it. It was about as bad as they got — breathless, inflammatory, and accurate in only the loosest geographical sense. The phrase Secret Affair was doing a great deal of work.

“The children are visible in the photograph?”

“In the background. Not clearly. But visible.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Estrella had been so careful. The beaches, the parks, the library — always chosen for their anonymity, always arranged to minimize exposure. And still.

“I need to reach her.”

“Her line’s been busy for an hour. I suspect you’re not the only one trying.”

Of course it had. I thought of Estrella’s telephone ringing steadily, the journalists and the acquaintances and the well-meaning people who needed to tell her what she already knew, and underneath all of it, the two ex-husbands whose lawyers were probably already making notes.