After freshening up, Consuelo put on a clean white dress and went downstairs. She searched every room, puzzled. Where was Anna? Didn’t she say she’d be staying home with her today? Maybe she’d been called out on an emergency. After all, the doctor had other patients besides her. Still, she couldn’t help but feel—abandoned.
Consuelo ate lunch, then decided to clean the bedrooms. Returning upstairs, she noticed that the door to one of the two rooms that were always locked was open just a crack. She hesitated, wondering if it was right for her to look inside. Finally, curiosity won out.
It was a nursery. Blue wallpaper with a pattern of brightly colored balloons covered the walls. A large wooden crib dominated the room. It was filled with small toys and stuffed animals. One of the latter looked vaguely familiar. She picked up the smiling purple dinosaur with a green chest, trying hard to remember something. Then she squeezed the toy’s left paw—but nothing happened. Wasn’t it supposed to play a song?
On a chest of drawers was the picture of a baby boy, perhaps one year old. He smiled out at her from the frame with big blue eyes. As Consuelo stared at the photograph his face seemed to blur, the skin turning a little darker, the eyes a deep black. Then the illusion was gone.
Carefully replacing the stuffed dinosaur where she’d found it, as Consuelo started to leave she saw a key on the floor. It unlocked the door of the adjacent room.
This one was almost a duplicate of the bedroom she was using. Except the furniture was smaller, just the right size for a little girl. It too held stuffed animals and toys. Mostly dolls, but there was a child’s plastic doctor’s kit too. And another photograph. At first Consuelo thought the little girl had black hair, long and straight.
But her eyes were playing tricks with her again. The girl in the picture had blonde hair, short and curly.
Consuelo walked pensively down the stairs to the family room. For many minutes she sat on the couch in the deathly quiet house, trying to dredge up memories. And deal with the terrible feeling of loss and guilt deep within her.
The clock on the mantle chimed two o’clock, startling her out of her trance. Hoping more sound would distract her from her thoughts, she walked to the entertainment center and turned on the radio.
A voice said, “—Now hear Haydn’s oratorio, The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross.” Then an orchestra began to play dark, foreboding music. Its mood of hopeless grief and impending tragedy fitted her own perfectly.
So engrossed was she in the music that it took her a few seconds to realize the doorbell was ringing. Half way to the front door Consuelo stopped, hesitating. Anna wouldn’t want her to answer the door, concerned that it might be someone who wanted to hurt her. But, she told herself, I can’t hide and live in fear the rest of my life. Head held resolutely high, she turned off the security system and unlocked the door—
There was no one there. No sign anyone had been there—except for the small brown envelope atop the “Welcome” mat. Consuelo picked it up, closed the door, and walked back to the family room.
The envelope was addressed to her. Inside was a silver disc, with two words written on it in black.
PLAY IT.
Consuelo turned down the radio, turned on the television, inserted the DVD into the player, and pressed the “Start” button. Returning to the couch, she waited.
Suddenly pulsating synthesizer music filled the room, accompanied by the applause of an unseen audience. The TV showed a brightly colored studio set with two smartly-dressed young people sitting on plastic chairs. The amply-endowed woman on the left exposed a pearly grin to her male co-host, then looked at the camera. “Thank you for joining us on ‘America’s Most Hated Criminals!’ ”
The woman’s face turned serious. “Our first story tonight is about motherly love gone horribly wrong.”
The scene switched to a picture of a chubby, laughing baby girl in a high-chair. “Consuelo Lopez should have been destined for a happy life. The only child of two well-to-do physicians, she grew up in a fashionable suburb near Chicago.”
A montage of photographs flashed on the screen. A shy seven-year-old standing straight and tall in her crisp white First Communion dress and veil. A gangly raven-tressed girl, blossoming into young womanhood, at her Confirmation. A confident teenager, sitting at a long table captaining her high school debate team.
The narrator said, “Consuelo was raised with all the advantages a pair of loving, doting parents could give her. She was a favorite of the nuns who taught her in high school. A model student. Senior class president. Editor of the school newspaper. Valedictorian. A devout, religious girl who even considered entering a convent.
“Then it was on to college for Consuelo, with new achievements and honors.” More photos. In one she was in her dorm room, with her smiling parents on either side of her. “Phi Beta Kappa. Summa cum laude. A straight-A student, graduating with a degree in biology.
“Then, medical school.” Stock footage of earnest young people in white lab coats working in a laboratory. “In her first three years, Consuelo again excelled in her work and studies. A bright future as a healer of human suffering seemed assured for her.”
Suddenly the perky music on the TV took on a sinister tone. “But then, tragedy struck.” The picture in her dorm room with her parents returned. “Her father, a prominent heart specialist, suddenly died himself of a heart attack.”
A computer-animated black “X” superimposed itself on Papa.
“Consuelo had been very close to him, and took his death hard. Her grades plummeted. She became unreliable and apathetic, even hostile to those who tried to help her. Finally, after she made a careless mistake that nearly caused a patient’s death, she dropped out of medical school a few months before she was due to graduate.”
The camera showed the studio set again. The grinning young man with blow-dried hair asked his co-host, “What happened next, Peggy Sue?”
“Well, Todd, Consuelo’s life fell apart.” The TV showed a filmed sequence in a dingy smoke-filled tavern. Seated on a stool at the bar was a young Hispanic woman who didn’t really look like her at all. Her scarlet lipstick was smeared, and she was wearing too much mascara. The word “Reenactment” flashed briefly at the bottom of the screen.
“We interviewed some of those who saw first-hand what kind of ‘career’ Consuelo now began. They all said the woman who once considered becoming a nun plunged into a cesspool of alcohol and promiscuity.”
The actress drained a glass of dark-colored liquor, then added it to the other empty glasses scattered in front of her. A fat, sweating man in his late fifties sat on the stool next to hers. The eyes in his pudgy, familiar-looking face lingered lasciviously on the firm breasts beneath her tight white blouse. Then he whispered something in her ear. The actress shrugged apathetically. The man placed some money on the counter, winked at the bartender, and led the woman out the door.
There was a close-up of Peggy Sue’s painted face. “But after a year of this sordid behavior, Consuelo seemed to get her life back together. She renewed her acquaintance with a former medical school classmate, a promising young doctor training to become a surgeon. He and Consuelo rented a house and moved in together. A year later their daughter Maria was born.”
The picture of a plump, giggling baby girl in a highchair filled the screen, “Now the woman who had almost become an M.D. settled into the role of ‘housewife,’ tending to the domestic needs of her lover and their child. A few years later their family had a new addition.” The next photo showed a two-year-old girl with long black hair gamely struggling to prop up her six-month-old brother for their portrait.