The Years That Followed by Catherine Dunne Read Free Book Online Page A

speaking, the way she walked with her head up, the way she often answered back, her sharpness igniting her husband’s rage: all of these things set her apart from the other village women.
    Never marry, she’d told her only daughter, shaking her head. Her brown eyes were alight with intensity, her fists tightly clenched.
    Answer to no man.
    * * *
    Everything had terrified Pilar on her arrival in Madrid: the traffic, the noise, the enormous scale of the city and its monuments. The Puerta del Sol—all those hurrying people!
    When her mother had pressed the envelope of pesetas into Pilar’s hands, dusting off the ghosting of flour as she did so, she also handed her daughter something else: a scrap of paper, many times folded. When Pilar unpleated it, it felt feathery in her hands, insubstantial. She held on tightly, afraid it might fly away from her. She sat beside her mother on the bed as María Dolores struggled for breath to explain. She laid one trembling forefinger on the faded writing.
    â€œThis man in Madrid will help you. His name is Alfonso Gómez. He is a lawyer, and you can trust him with your life.”
    Pilar looked at her, startled, her eyes full of questions. How did her mother know this man, when she had never, as far as Pilar knew, even left her village? And how did she know that Pilar could trust him?
    María Dolores allowed her gaze to rest somewhere above Pilar’s shoulder. “I know this man. He is from around here.” She turned and looked her daughter in the eye. “He is the man I should have married.”
    Pilar gasped. She couldn’t help herself. Her mother had a past ? That was even more astonishing than the fact that there had once been another man in her life. Up until that moment, in Pilar’s young eyes, María Dolores, Mamá , had been simply that: a mother, always present to her four children: three boys and one girl, her youngest. She was a wife, too, of course, but that amounted to almost the same thing. Her life was defined by belonging to other people: to a casually brutal man, to four grown-up children, to some brothers and sisters of her own, carelessly scattered around Asturias and Galicia.
    â€œI was not good enough for Alfonso’s family,” Pilar’s mother continued. “Never good enough. They were wealthy pig farmers from close to Montánchez; my father and mother owned a few acres here in Santa Juanita. Alfonso asked me to run away with him to Madrid, but I was too afraid. I said no. It is something that I have regretted all my life. I should have gone. I should have had the courage.”
    It was the longest speech Pilar had ever heard her mother make. She did a rapid calculation: Paco, Pilar’s eldest brother, was twenty-­five, so Alfonso had disappeared from her mother’s life at least that many years ago; how did she even know he was still alive? Suddenly, Pilar was struck by a new and astonishing thought: What if Alfonso and Mamá . . . ? What if Paco, gentle Paco—so different from Javier and Carlos . . . ? What if her mother was telling her only half of the truth?
    As though she’d read her daughter’s mind, María Dolores said: “There are some things we will not talk about—there is no time. Just know that Alfonso is alive and well and practicing law in Madrid. I sometimes have news of him.” Pilar didn’t dare ask. María Dolores reached out and took her daughter’s hand. “You must not be like me. You must not be afraid. You must go and make a life for yourself.”
    Even at the time, Pilar knew that she would remember those words forever. Her mother’s intensity, the urgency of her gaze, the cold, grim bareness of her bedroom: the images were seared at once into Pilar’s memory. She watched as the older woman slumped back against her pillow. Talking exhausted her.
    â€œRest now, Mamá,” Pilar said. “I will