The North Face of the Heart - Dolores Redondo Page 0,103

A deep pain forced her to close her eyes. She couldn’t look at him. Her lids squeezed out a single tear, silent and heavy. It slid down her cheek just as her father turned to smile at her.

“May I have this dance, Princess?”

His smile vanished instantly. He knelt before her and traced his finger along the track the tear had left on her cheek. “What’s wrong, darling?”

Amaia kept her lips pressed tightly together as she looked at him and struggled, agonized, against her inevitable fate. She threw her arms around his neck and pressed herself to his chest so she wouldn’t have to look in his eyes.

Juan hugged her, deeply distressed.

“Amaia?” he called in a worried voice. He picked her up and seated her on the edge of his steel worktable so that they were face to face. He released her long enough to switch off the radio, then took her hands and kissed them. “Tell me what’s happening, dearest.”

The waltz was gone forever. She heard the crackling of the lit ovens, the constant drip of that faucet. The sensation of déjà vu was so overpowering that it almost made her ill as she feared the outcome of her confession. From this moment on, that place and those sounds would bring to her mind the dark recollections of a night, of death, spurring in her a survival instinct that bid her to flee as fast as possible.

She opened her mouth and described the horror.

“Ama,” she managed to say through sudden sobs. “She scares me . . . she makes me really afraid. At night, when you’re asleep, she comes to my bed.” The terror of it replaced her desperate shame, and her eyes opened wide. “Ama wants to eat me, she really does! She says she’s going to gobble me up, and if you don’t stop her, she will!”

Juan looked away from his daughter’s pleading eyes and, vacantly, into the middle distance.

In his mind he hears the swish of the bedclothes. The floorboards creak beneath the light tread of his wife’s feet as she crosses the room in the dark. Juan sits up, turns to his left to peer toward the door, opens his eyes wide in the dark as if somehow that will help him hear better. The girls’ room is directly across the hall. Rosario takes two steps or maybe three to get from one door to the other. He hears her move and sometimes makes out a low murmur of words that he doesn’t manage—or want—to understand. Only a minute passes, a tiny minute during which all his senses are intensely focused as he holds his breath and prays this will not last any longer than that agonizing eternal minute. He senses his wife’s return. Juan lies back, careful not to make noise, and pretends to be sleeping. She lies down at his side. Even without touching her, he knows the chill in the house has penetrated her body. Her heart is beating wildly. It’s over, it’s done, and she won’t get up again tonight. But he doesn’t dare relax until he’s sure that she’s sleeping.

Juan released his daughter just for an instant. He reached to click on the radio. A melancholy piano piece had replaced the waltz.

“Lots of children have nightmares. That’s normal at your age. You have a lively imagination, and you read a lot. That gets you excited. Don’t you worry, those are just dreams. They can’t hurt you.”

She couldn’t believe what he was saying. “But, Aita . . .”

“You dreamed it, Amaia. Dreams aren’t real, even though sometimes they seem to be.” He lowered her to the floor. The girl wept, intense and forlorn, her eyes squeezed shut. Juan was convinced she was refusing to look at him. He again gazed out toward that faraway point beyond the wall, this time in shame. Regretting his response, but unable to look at her, he bent down and kissed the top of her head. “But any time your nightmares scare you a lot, you can call me.” He turned back to his worktable.

Amaia wept for a long time without opening her eyes. When at last she did, her father was back at his work, and the notes from a new waltz floated in the air, mixed with the buttery scent of baking pastry. He continued rolling out the dough, his back to her, though he no longer seemed to have his heart in it. Amaia picked up her school bag and shuffled slowly to the