We sat in the wicker chairs on the porch, facing the adobe and stone ranch that Guillermo had restored with his own hands forty years earlier. The property was in a high area, surrounded by pines and oaks, far from the town’s tourist center. It was our private paradise.
—Beatriz, you can’t continue with this obsession. Guillermo is dead. You have to accept it and move on. This whole wall thing is… grotesque.
“I accept that she died, Beatriz. I accept it every morning when I wake up and the bed is empty. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to ignore her last wishes.”
—What will, for God’s sake? You’re talking about a man who was very ill in his last months. The medication, the pain… perhaps he wasn’t thinking clearly when he wrote those supposed letters.
I felt a hot pang of anger in my chest.
“Guillermo had a weak heart, it’s true. But his mind was brilliant until his last breath. He was a meteorologist, Beatriz, and one of the best. He was always obsessed with weather patterns.”
—Yes, yes, I know. But in his later years he spent hours looking at old data and doing calculations that nobody understood. That’s not science, Marga, that’s senility.