Forests of the Heart Read Free Page A

spoke two different languages, where the same word in one meant something else entirely in the other.
    “It’s late,” she said. “I should go.”
    “Perdona,
Bettina. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
    She wasn’t angry, Bettina thought. She was sad. But she knew her sister wouldn’t understand that either.
    “I know,” she said. “Give my love to Chuy and Janette.”
    “Sí. Vaya con Dios.”
    And if He will not have me? Bettina thought. For when all was said and done, God was a man, and she had never fared well in the world of men. It was easier to live in
la época del mito
of her
abuela.
In myth time, all were equal. People, animals, plants, the earth itself. As all times were equal and existed simultaneously.
    “Qué te vaya bien,”
she said. Take care.
    She cradled the receiver and finally chose the small shape of a dog from the
milagros
scattered across the tabletop.
El lobo
was a kind of a dog, she thought. Perhaps she was making this fetish for herself. She should sew her own name inside, instead of Marty Gibson’s, the man who had asked her to make it for him. Ah, but would it draw
los lobos
to her, or keep them away? And which did she truly want?
    Getting up from the table, she crossed the kitchen and opened the door to look outside. Her breath frosted in the air where the men had been barefoot. January was a week old and the ground was frozen. It had snowed again this week, after a curious Christmas thaw that had left the ground almost bare in many places. The wind had blown most of the snow off the lawn where the men had gathered, pushing it up in drifts against the trees and the buildings scattered among them: cottages and a gazebo, each now boasting a white skirt. She could sense a cold front moving in from the north, bringing with it the bitter temperatures that would leave fingers and face numb after only a few minutes of exposure. Yet some of the men had been in short sleeves, broadcloth suit jackets slung over their shoulders, all of them walking barefoot on the frozen lawn.
    Por eso….
    She didn’t think they were men at all.
    “Your friends are gone.”
    “Ellos no son mis amigos,”
she said, then realized that speaking for so long with Adelita on the phone had left her still using Spanish. “They aren’t my friends,” she repeated. “I don’t know who, or even what they are.”
    “Perhaps they are ghosts.”
    “Perhaps,” Bettina agreed, though she didn’t think so. They were too complicated to be described by so straightforward a term.
    She gazed out into the night a moment longer, then finally closed the door on the deepening cold and turned to face the woman who had joined her in the kitchen.
    If
los lobos
were an elusive, abstracted mystery, then Nuala Fahey was one much closer to home, though no more comprehendible. She was a riddling presence in the house, her mild manner at odds with the potent
brujería
Bettina could sense in the woman’s blood. This was an old, deep spirit, not some simple
ama de llaves,
yet in the nine months that Bettina had been living in the house, Nuala appeared to busy herself with no more than her housekeeping duties. Cleaning, cooking, the light gardening that Salvador left for her. The rooms were always dusted and swept, the linens and bedding fresh and sweet-smelling. Meals appeared when they should, with enough for all who cared to partake of them. The flower gardens and lawns were well-tended, the vegetable patch producing long after the first frost.
    She was somewhere in her mid-forties, a tall, handsome woman with striking green eyes and a flame of red hair only vaguely tamed into a loose bun at the back of her head. While her wardrobe consisted entirely of men’s clothes—pleated trousers and dress shirts, tweed vests and casual sports jackets—there was nothing mannish about her figure or her demeanor. Yet neither was she as passive as she might seem. True, her step was light, her voice soft and low. She might listen more than