When Fernando next returned to Chico’s junkyard home, he did so alone. Chico’s green roadster was not there, nor was Pedro’s truck. Banned from El Toro, their father Esteban was no doubt at Pepe’s uncle’s bar already drunk.

There were only the children and chickens about, the fixture of the old man dozing perpetually in his customary chair on the porch. The older girl Mercedes was sweeping around him when Fernando approached the step. Seeing him, she froze, clutching the broom handle to her budding breasts.

“Is your mother in the house?” Fernando asked.

She gave him a timid nod.

Fernando smiled and stepped past her, into the main room which smelled just as much of savory cooksmoke as it had the last time he was here—and probably always did. Chico’s mother Emmanuella stood predictably at the kitchen stove, stirring a pot and humming along with the radio.

“Señora?” he called out.

The stout woman turned to him in surprise. She seemed at first not to recognize him in the suit that he wore.

“Fernando,” she said warmly, recovering, “qué sorpresa.” Switching off the radio and wiping her hands on her apron, she padded over to him and gave him a motherly touch to the arm. “Cómo estás?”

“Bien,” Fernando replied, casting a glance over the room to make sure no errant children were hanging about, but there was only the baby sleeping in his kitchen crib. “May I sit?”

“Of course,” Emmanuella said, bustling over to the table with its coke-bottled wildflowers and pulling out one of the mismatched chairs for him. As Fernando sat, she hovered anxiously. “Chico and Pedro are not here. They are at work, I think.”

Fernando knew this, because he was the one who’d arranged it so. “That’s all right. It was you I wanted to speak with, if you have some time.”

Emmanuella’s thin brows rose. Rubbing her work-worn hands together, she gave a halting nod.

“Would you like something to eat?” she asked. Fernando shook his head politely. “Something to drink?”

Fernando smiled. “Sí, gracias.”

He watched her hasten over to the ice box and open it. She hesitated with her hand on the taped handle of the milk jug before glancing back to him and fetching out a beer instead. Popping the top with her apron and hard hands alone, she set it before him on the table.

Scooping up the baby who’d begun to stir, she sat down at the corner beside him, gazing at him in something like trepidation. It seemed to Fernando that she wasn’t at all in the habit of anyone coming to call on her alone. He’d have smiled at her again to set her at ease. But since this gesture from him only seemed to fluster her more, he kept his expression neutral instead and took a drink from the beer she’d served him.

“How well did you know my mother?” he asked, setting the bottle down with a clink.

“Oh, well,” Emmanuella said, bouncing the baby a little in her lap, “Carmen was…I wouldn’t say that she was secretive, but she did tend to keep things close to the chest. It was hard to know what she was feeling, what she was thinking. She could be hard to read, at times. But our fathers were brothers, and we were about the same age, so I suppose I knew her about as well as anyone.”

“I don’t feel that I know anything about her,” Fernando said. “My grandmother hasn’t been forthcoming, and her mind is also confused. So I’d be grateful for whatever you could tell me.”

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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy