VII.
Another Death
Were these questions preparing her? Was Eulalie’s death preparing her?
They must have been, for on the following Tuesday, one of her days with Gina, she comes home from filling in another basket of kittens in three shades of gray yarn and being served little dainty cakes and fish pies to find Lidia and Esmeralda looking all over the house for Laureano.
They haven’t seen him since eleven o’clock. Rosa never pauses to help them search the house, but goes immediately to where she knows he will be: somewhere on the little shortcut he takes by the river, which brings him up behind the Mexican store.
The River Charles. All her life she lives by a river. The River Plata in Xoyatla. The River Merrimack in Lowell. The River Shawsheen in Billerica—not a very important river,
