She nodded and sighed as the light in the room dispersed the dark horrors of her dream and slowly brought her mind back to reality. ‘Perhaps,’ she conceded.
‘I’m only going for a few weeks,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been away for a long time.’
‘I know. You’ve been a wonderful father to Ramoncito,’ she said and smiled.
‘And a good lover to you?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows and smirking.
‘And a good lover to me,’ she repeated.
He cocked his head to one side and frowned. ‘You know I’ll never leave you,’ he said. ‘You have no reason to be insecure. I’ll always love you.’
‘I know. And I will always love you, too.’
When Ramon turned out the light and gathered Estella into his arms she was unable to sleep. Not because she was no longer tired, but because she feared that she might dream of death for the third time, thus making it happen in reality. Her mother had once told her that she had predicted her own mother’s death in a dream. Three times she dreamed that her mother lay dying in front of a pink house. As she knew of no pink house she didn’t worry and forgot all about it. But a few weeks later her mother died of a heart attack tending to the honeysuckle that grew up the side of their white house. It was sunset and the wall glowed a warm, radiant pink. Estella lay fretting until sleep overcame her. When she awoke at dawn she realized to her relief that she hadn’t dreamed at all.
When Ramon had finally divorced Helena, Estella had hoped that he would marry her. This hope she guarded secretly, not even telling her parents. But to
her dismay he never mentioned marriage. He was contented the way things were. He was free to come and go without the psychological bind of a contract.
Mariana also hoped he would formalize his relationship with Estella. Over the years she and the mother of her grandson had become firm friends. Slowly the divisions imposed upon them by the nature of their places in the world fell away and they were free to live as equals. Estella included Mariana in the life of her son, calling her regularly in Santiago and enjoying her secret visits when she spent the long summer months in Cachagua. At first Mariana had longed to tell Ignacio about Estella and Ramoncito, but little by little she grew accustomed to her secret and it no longer troubled her.
Ramoncito was now eleven years old. He was dark haired and olive skinned like his parents, with the rich, honey eyes of his mother. He was carefree and independent like Ramon and sensitive like his mother, yet his nature was his alone and given to him by God. He was a child who gave only pleasure. He was contented to listen to his father’s rambling stories and collect shells on the beach with his mother. He sat talking to the tombstones with his grandfather and indulged both grandmothers with stories of his adventures with his young friends. He hadn’t inherited his father’s impatient desire to travel nor
his selfish need to satisfy his own longings at the expense of those of the people he loved.
Mariana said that he had been blessed with the best of both parents and she was right. She often saw Federica in the honesty of his smile and in the trusting innocence of his eyes, and she wondered whether Ramon saw it, whether he remembered and she consoled herself that she remembered for him. As long as she was alive, Federica and Hal would never be forgotten.
Ramon loved his son with an intensity with which he had once loved Federica. He still loved his daughter and often, when he was inventing stories for Ramoncito, his heart ached with nostalgia, because Federica had loved his stories too. Then he recalled that painful moment when his own negligence had reared up to throttle him with remorse.
He had seen her. Bicycling down the lane on her way home, her face aglow with happiness and exertion combined, ignorant that the man who passed her in the black Mercedes was her father. He had commanded the driver to stop the car at once. Federica, hearing the car screech to a sudden halt, had braked her bicycle and turned around, squinting into the sun. For a few moments, which seemed painfully long in his memory, he had watched her with longing,
fighting the impulse to open the car door and run towards her, to sweep her off her feet like he had always done when she had been a child. She was no longer a little girl. She was still small in stature, small for a thirteen-year-old, but her limbs were long and her face that of a young woman; slim, angular, proud. He had suppressed an inner groan that threatened to break out into a desperate cry. Federica was on his lips and he had had to struggle in order to swallow her name. She had shielded her eyes against the sun with her hand, one foot on the pedal, one on the tarmac. Her hair was long and flowing in the wind. She still had the hair of an angel. La Angelita. But he had remembered what Helena had told him. Federica was happy without him. If he had embraced her as he had desired, his embrace would have been full of false promises. Promises of commitment, promises of devotion but above all the promise to prevent Helena from marrying Arthur and he knew he couldn’t do that. So, faced with promises he could not fulfil he had sadly asked the chauffeur to drive on. He had owed it to Helena to leave her free to marry Arthur and live in peace with her children.