Emmanuella nodded. Her eyes were soft with sympathy.

“Carmen died when you were very young.”

“Not so young as that,” Fernando said, his voice clipped and hard. “I don’t know her because she was seldom around.”

“It must have been difficult for her,” Emmanuella said gently, “caring for you on her own.”

Fernando’s mouth thinned. “She didn’t care for me. I cared for myself. Even when I was a baby, she pawned me off on others. She was always away singing at bars and carrying on with her boyfriends. She didn’t give a damn about me or anyone else. She lived only for herself. She was a terrible mother. A terrible person.”

Emmanuella frowned heavily. “Fernando, please—you shouldn’t speak this way. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. Whatever Carmen’s faults or failings, she was the one who brought you into this world.”

“It’s only the truth. Her death doesn’t change the facts of what she did while she was alive.” Inclining his head, Fernando said, “But it’s also true that she was my mother. That’s why I want to understand her, what made her this way.”

Emmanuella sighed, patting his hand. “Oh, Fernando. What makes the sun rise or the birds sing? Only the Lord can know the answer to these things.”

“Not just Him,” Fernando said curtly. “If there’s no cause and effect, then there is no God. There’s only chance and chaos, and I don’t believe that’s so. The sun rises because the earth is locked in its orbit. The birds sing to survive, as their ancestors did before them. But the will to survive is only part of the answer. Even the lowest of human beings operate on a higher plane. Blood and base instinct don’t account for everything. But there is a full accounting, there must be.”

His eyes snapped to her. She held the baby a bit closer to her chest, like a talisman against him.

“You are her cousin who grew up with her,” Fernando said, “and you didn’t turn out like she did. So, what was the difference?”

Under the intensity of his stare, Emmanuella shifted in her seat. “Carmen was bold and shrewd in a way that I wasn’t. But she wasn’t a terrible person, not the Carmen I knew. I’ve often wondered myself over the years what happened to her. You must know her father Miguel went missing when she was a young girl?” Fernando nodded. “This was very difficult for Carmen. It hardened her heart. Joselito was the only one who could reach her. After he, too, went missing was when she became…”

Emmanuella trailed off, no doubt searching for the nicest way to frame it. Fernando waited.

“…Troubled,” the good woman said at last. “Carmen searched high and low for him. She searched everywhere. She swore he would never have left her. She insisted that there had been foul play of some sort. He never turned up, but she couldn’t let it go. Then one day she seemed changed, cold and empty somehow like her soul had gone out of her. I believe her bitterness had finally gotten the best of her. That it had made her snap. The last time I saw her,” Emmanuella paused, taking a deep breath, “the last time I saw her I had just started dating Esteban. She told me that if I kept seeing him I was an even bigger idiot than she’d always thought I was. It chilled me, it was such a vicious thing to say. I told her so, and she smiled coldly at me, and that was the last I knew of her until I learned that she’d died.”

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy