Suddenly, I felt someone touch me at the waist, and I turned around to look into his smiling face.
“Ignacio!” I cried. “Where were you?”
“In the rear watching you.”
We stared at each other a moment, and then he embraced me.
“You are more beautiful than I remember,” he said. “Life in America has been good for you.”
“And you look older, more mature.”
“You either grow up quickly or die when you’re desperate,” he said.
“I brought you this from your mother,” I said, before I forgot, and handed him the cross and the letter.
He looked at the cross and shook his head. “She was saving this for my wedding.”
“She thinks you need it now,” I told him. “It was very important to her that I get it to you, and her letter.”
“Sí. So,” he began, “how long…”
He paused, and the expression on his face changed quickly to a look of shock and fear. I turned to see what had so frightened him and gasped. Seemingly out of thin air, a half-dozen federal police officers appeared. Police cars came flying down the street as well.
Ignacio looked at me with such accusation in his eyes I couldn’t speak. All I could do was shake my head.
“What did you trade for this? What will your aunt give you?” he asked.
“No. I did nothing. I did—”
Two of the officers rushed at him to seize his arms.
“Ignacio Davila, we arrest you. You are wanted for murder back in the United States.”
“No, he is not! No, it wasn’t murder!” I cried.
They pushed me aside and put handcuffs on him. When they did, t
he cross and the letter his mother had sent with me fell. No one stopped to pick them up, so I did. I started after him.
“Ignacio!” I screamed as they led him toward the police cars that had now appeared.
He turned and looked back at me with such pain I thought my heart would literally tear in two.
“I did not do this! I swear. Ignacio! Your mother’s cross, her letter,” I said, holding them up.
“Take them back with you!” he cried.
They stuffed him into the back of a police car. I started toward him.
A police officer seized my arm.
“You will have to come with us,” he said. I was taken to another car, but I was not put in handcuffs. I put the cross and letter back into my purse quickly. They drove me to the local police station, where I was taken to a small room with two chairs and a table and told to wait. While I did so, I went through my purse to look for some tissues to wipe the tears from my face and suddenly realized I was missing something.
Where was the note Ignacio had sent me through his mother, the note that had described where we would meet, the note that I had read often before we had left for Mexico?
A cold realization made my body shudder.
Sophia, I thought. Sophia had found it but had not said a word. She had let us go, and then she had told. Why hadn’t I noticed? Why hadn’t I realized it was missing? Why hadn’t I torn it up the way Ignacio’s father had torn up every correspondence from him? Look what my carelessness had brought down upon us.