“I know,” Tom Jackson said. “Your girlfriend told us about that. And she said you didn’t blush.”
“I don’t think I can blush. I might be able to learn how, but I haven’t yet.”
“Learn how?” Jackson echoed blankly. “But you just smiled.”
Alex glanced at his father, and Marsh nodded. “I’ve been practicing. I’m not like other people, so I’m practicing being like other people. It seemed like I ought to grin before I admitted that Bob was teasing me, so I did.”
“Okay,” Finnerty said, staring at the boy and feeling chilled. “Is there anything else you remember? Anything at all?”
Alex hesitated, then shook his head. A few minutes later, Finnerty and Jackson were gone.
“Alex?” Marsh asked. “Is there something else you remember about last night that you didn’t tell them?”
Once again, Alex shook his head. Everything he remembered, he’d told them about. But they hadn’t asked him if he knew who killed Valerie Benson. If they had, he would have told them, though he wouldn’t have been able to tell them why she died, or why Mrs. Lewis died, either. But when he’d awakened this morning, the last pieces had fallen into place, and it had all come together in his mind. He understood his brain now, and soon he would understand exactly what had happened.
He would understand what had happened, and he would know who he was.
“Why, Alex,” Arlette Pringle said, her plain features lighting up with a smile, “you’re becoming quite a regular here, aren’t you?”
“I need some more information, Miss Pringle,” Alex replied. “I need to know more about the town.”
“La Paloma?” Miss Pringle asked, her voice doubtful. “I’m afraid I just don’t have much. I have the book I showed you a couple of days ago, but that’s about it.” She shrugged ruefully. “I’m afraid not much ever happened here. Nothing worth writing about, anyway.”
“But there has to be something,” Alex pressed. “Something about the old days, when the town was mostly Mexican.”
“Mexican,” Arlette repeated, her lips pursing thoughtfully as her fingers tapped on her desktop. “I’m afraid I just don’t know exactly what you want. I have some information about the Franciscan fathers, and the missions, but I’m not sure there’s much that’s specifically about our mission. La Paloma just wasn’t that important.”
“What about when the Americans came?”
Again Arlette shrugged. “Not that I know of. Of course, there are the old stories, but I don’t pay any attention to them, and I don’t think they’re written down anywhere.”
“What stories?”
“Oh, some of the older Chicanos in town still talk about the old days, when Don Roberto de Meléndez y Ruiz still had the hacienda, and about what happened after the treaty was signed.” She leaned forward, and her voice dropped confidentially. “Supposedly there was a massacre up there.”
Alex frowned slightly, as a vague memory stirred on the edges of his consciousness. “At the hacienda?”
“That’s what they say. But of course, the stories have been passed down through the generations, and I don’t suppose there’s much truth to any of them, really. But if you really want to know about them, why don’t you go see Mrs. Torres?”
“María?” Alex asked, his voice suddenly hollow. For the first time since his operation, a pang of genuine fear crashed through the barriers in his mind, and he felt himself tremble. It fit. It fit perfectly with the idea that had begun forming in his mind last night, then come to fruition this morning.
Arlette Pringle nodded. “That’s right. She still lives around the corner in a little house behind the mission. You tell her I sent you, but I warn you, once she starts talking, she won’t stop.” She wrote an address on a slip of paper and handed it to Alex. “Now, don’t believe everything she says,” she cautioned as Alex was about to leave the library. “Don’t forget, she’s old, and she’s always been very bitter. I can’t say I blame her, really, but still, it’s best not to put too much stock in her stories. I’m afraid a lot of them have been terribly exaggerated.”
Alex left the library, and glanced at the address on the scrap of paper, then crumpled it and threw it into a trash bin. A few minutes later he was a block and a half away, his eyes fixed on a tiny frame house that seemed on the verge of falling in on itself.
Home.
The word flashed into his mind, and images of the little house tumbled over one another. He knew, with all the certainty of a lifetime of memories, that he had come home. He pushed his way through the broken gate and made his way up onto the sagging porch. He knocked at the front door, then waited. As he was about to knock again, the door opened a crack, and the ancient eyes of María Torres peered out at him.
A sigh drifted from her throat, and she opened the door wider.
“M-Mama?” Alex stammered uncertainly.
María gazed at him for a moment, then slowly shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “You are not my son. You are someone else. What do you want?”
“M-Miss Pringle sent me.” Alex faltered. “She said you might be able to tell me what happened here a long time ago.”
There was a long silence while she seemed to consider his words. “You want to know?” she asked at last, her eyes narrowing to slits. “But you already know. You are Alejandro.”
Alex frowned, suddenly certain that the familiar searing pain was about to rip through his mind and that the voices were about to start whispering to him. He could almost feel them, niggling around the edges of his consciousness. Doggedly he fought against them. “I … I just want to know what happened a long time ago,” he managed to repeat.
María Torres fell silent once more, regarding him thoughtfully. At last she nodded. “You are Alejandro,” she said again. “You should know what happened.” She held the door wide, and Alex stepped through into the eerily familiar confines of a tiny living room furnished only with a threadbare couch, a sagging easy chair, and a Formica-topped table surrounded by four worn dining chairs.
All of it was exactly as it had been in his memories a few moments before.
The shades were drawn, but from one corner a color television suffused the room with an eerie light. Its sound was muted.
“For company,” the old woman muttered. “I don’t listen, but I watch.” She lowered herself carefully into the easy chair, and Alex sat gingerly on the edge of the sofa. “What stories you want to hear?”
“The thieves,” Alex said quietly. “Tell me about the thieves and the murderers.”
María Torres’s eyes flashed darkly in the dim light. “Por qué?” she demanded. “Why do you want to know now?”
“I remember things,” Alex said. “I remember things that happened, and I want to know more about them.”
“What things?” The old woman was leaning forward now, her eyes fixed intently on Alex.
“Fernando,” Alex said. “Tío Fernando. He’s buried in San Francisco, at the mission.”
María’s eyes widened momentarily, then she nodded, and let herself sag back in the chair once again. “Su tío,” she muttered. “Sí, es la verdad …”
“The truth?” Alex asked. “What’s the truth?”
Once again the old woman’s eyes brightened. “Habla usted español?”
“I … I don’t know,” Alex said. “But I understood what you said.”
The old lady fell silent again, and examined Alex closely through her bleary eyes. In the light of the television set, his features were indistinct, and yet, she realized, the coloring was right. His hair was dark, and his eyes were blue, just as her grandfather had told her Don Roberto’s had been, and as his own had been. Making up her mind, she nodded emphatically. “Sí,” she muttered. “Es la verdad. Don Alejando ha regresado …”