Brain Child Page 0,69

right angles to the church, the little mission school stood with its doors and windows open to the fresh air, and in the schoolyard five children were playing while a black-habited nun looked on, her hands modestly concealed under the voluminous material of her sleeves.

On the other side of the plaza there was a small store, its wood construction in odd contrast to the substantial adobe of the mission buildings. As Alex watched, a woman came out, and though she looked directly at him, seemed not to see him.

He began to listen as María whispered to him of the church and of the brightly painted images of the saints that lined its walls.

Then María began whispering to him of La Paloma and of the people who had built the village and loved it.

“But there were others,” she went on. “Others came, and took it all away. Go, Alejandro. Go into the church and see how it was. See what once was here.”

As if in a dream, he rose from the bench and crossed the plaza, then stepped through the doors of the sanctuary. There was a coolness inside the church, and the light from two stained-glass windows, one above the door, the other above the altar, danced colorfully on the walls. In niches all around the sanctuary stood the saints María had told him of, and he went to one of them and looked up into the martyred eyes of the statue. He lit a candle for the saint, then turned and once more left the church. Across the plaza, still sitting on the bench, María Torres smiled at him and nodded.

Without a word being spoken, Alex turned, left the plaza, and began walking through the dusty paths of the village, the whispering voices in his head guiding his feet.

Marty Lewis woke up and listened for the normal morning sounds of the house. Then, slowly, she came to the realization that it was not morning at all, and that the house was empty.

A nap.

After Alan had left, and she’d cleaned up the house, she’d decided to take a nap.

She rolled over on the bed and stared at the clock. Two-thirty. She had been asleep for almost three hours. Groaning tiredly, she rose to her feet and went to the window, where she stared out for a moment into the hills behind the house, and wondered if Alan were up there somewhere, sleeping off his bender. Possibly so.

Or he might have walked into the village and be sitting right now at one of the bars, adding fuel to the fires of his rage.

But he wasn’t at the Medical Center. If he were, she would have heard from them by now.

She slipped into a housecoat and went downstairs, wondering once more if she should call the police, and once more deciding against it. Without a car, there was little harm Alan could do.

She poured the last of the morning’s coffee, thick with having been heated too long, down the drain, and began preparing a fresh pot.

When Alan came home—if Alan came home—he was going to be in need of coffee.

She was just about to begin measuring the coffee into the filter when she heard the back gate suddenly open, then close again. Relief flooded through her.

He’d come back.

She went on with her measuring, sure that before she was done the door would open and she would hear Alan’s voice apologizing once again for his drunkenness and pleading with her for forgiveness.

But nothing happened.

She finished setting up the coffee maker, turned it on, and, as it began to drip, went to the back door.

Two minutes later, her heart pounding in her throat, she knew what was going to happen to her, and knew there was nothing she could do about it.

Alex blinked, and looked around him. He was sitting on a bench in the plaza, staring across at the village hall and at the black-clad figure of María Torres disappearing down the side street toward the little cemetery and her home.

A thought flitted through his mind: She looks like a nun. An old Spanish nun.

Suddenly he became aware of someone waving to him from the steps of the library, and though he wasn’t quite sure who it was, he waved back.

But how had he gotten to the plaza?

The last thing he remembered, he’d been at the Square looking at the old oak tree and trying to remember if he’d ever played in it when he was a boy.

And now he was in the