Lilia's Secret by Erina Reddan Page A

questions about Andrés as a boy, and laughed that he’d been so worried he’d be small all his life that he had saved up to buy one of those stretchy muscle-building things from a magazine. For three months he’d been religious about using it for twenty minutes, morning and evening, and then he’d abandoned it in disappointment.
    I was blindsided by their next question, though I should have seen it coming.
    â€˜And babies, sister?’ Their round, ordinary faces shone at me eagerly.
    I pushed back from the table in an effort to appear more relaxed than I felt.
    â€˜One day …’ I hoped the shine of my smile made up for the abstraction of my reply.
    I swooped forwards. ‘Did Lilia really kill her husbands?’
    Now it was their turn to sit back and try to look nonchalant, as they exchanged more glances, successfully distracted.
    â€˜We don’t know for sure. Everybody says she did,’ Gabriela answered. ‘Andrés told us you’d ask.’
    Funny that he’d known.
    â€˜So we tried to find something for you,’ Lupita said, fishing in her big black handbag and pulling out a photograph.
    The woman in the photograph stared into my eyes. A shiver shot through me. I took the picture and squinted at it. It was black and white so I couldn’t distinguish the difference between the colours of her eyes, but her hair was wound around the top of her head like a crown.
    â€˜It is Lilia,’ Lupita said.
    I looked up at them. ‘She seems so … alive.’
    â€˜Do you ever wonder if you might be a witch?’ Gabriela asked me, sucking deeply on her cigarette, and fixing me with her eyes.
    â€˜No,’ I said, staring blankly back.
    â€˜We do,’ Gabriela said, laughing at me. ‘And you may be one, too.’
    â€˜Only you don’t know it yet,’ tacked on Lupita.
    My wrist itched like mad. I scratched it, then chased the itch down to the palm of my hand. It rarely got that far.
    â€˜Not evil,’ said Gabriela. ‘Just someone who feels more than they can see.’ She patted my hand reassuringly. ‘It’s a gift. Lilia had it too.’
    â€˜So do you think she killed her husbands?’ I asked again.
    â€˜We’re not sure.’ Lupita said quietly. ‘Not all of them, anyway.’
    â€˜Why not?’ I asked, looking from one to the other.
    They shifted in their seats. Lupita stubbed out her cigarette before it had reached the butt and shrugged.
    â€˜Did you meet her?’
    â€˜No.’ They both shook their heads. ‘Our father never saw her again after he escaped when he was ten.’
    â€˜Not even when she was dying,’ added Gabriela. ‘He said he didn’t want to darken the door of evil again.’
    â€˜Did he tell you she killed her husbands?’
    â€˜No. He never spoke of her,’ said Gabriela.
    â€˜Except, sister,’ broke in Lupita, ‘every now and then when we wouldn’t stop annoying him, he would tell us how he would sit for hours not talking in her presence, and how we should be more like him.’
    â€˜It’s her other son, Tío Juan,’ said Gabriela. ‘He says it. Youdon’t say your mother is a murderess unless you’re sure.’
    â€˜He hates her,’ said Lupita. ‘He’d say anything.’
    â€˜He might have his reasons.’ Gabriela patted her sister’s hand. ‘But it’s not just him, is it?’ Gabriela spoke gently to Lupita as if I wasn’t there. ‘You know this is what people believe about her.’
    â€˜It all comes from him.’
    â€˜And the fact that three of her five husbands died before their time.’
    â€˜What makes you think she didn’t?’ I broke in.
    Lupita crossed her arms on the table and glanced at Gabriela defiantly before she spoke.
    â€˜It’s not what we get from her,’ she said.
    â€˜From who?’ I frowned.
    â€˜From