She did not cover her head.
Her hair had just begun to grow again—short and soft—revealing the lines of her face clearly.
Cristóbal entered and studied her calmly.
There was no pity in his eyes.
Nor morbid curiosity.
“I saw you in the garden,” he said directly. “I should have intervened. I did not. That weighs on me.”
Alicia had not expected an apology.
Much less a sincere one.
“It would not have changed what happened,” she replied.
“Perhaps not. But you would have known that someone saw it for what it was.”
They spoke for an hour—about books, administration, the town, harvests, household accounts.
Cristóbal listened truly.
Alicia, cautious at first, began to answer with an intelligence no one in that house had ever bothered to recognize.
He returned four days later.
Then three days after that.
And again.
