The Altogether Unexpected Disappearance of Atticus Craftsman by Mamen Sánchez Page B

carols on their accordions. There were also a few loved-up couples making the most of other people’s boisterous happiness to enhance their own, wandering around the square holding hands and kissing under the colonnades.
    Berta was leaning over a counter, struggling to decide whether she wanted a figurine with a red or blue cape, when she heard María’s distinctive voice, high in the middle of a sentence and dropping at the end, right next to her, calling a man “my love.” The man had his arm around her waist and his back to Berta. María was facing Berta but was blind to everything but that unknown man’s lips.
    After a sloppy kiss complete with tongues and noisy slurps,María pulled away from her lover’s embrace and found herself face-to-face with her boss’s shocked expression. She jumped, raised her hand to her mouth, lowered her gaze, and knew that the next day she would have some serious explaining to do. It would be as bad as if her own mother had discovered that, instead of spending Three Kings Day around the hearth with her family, María had slipped out in search of the wild adventure of a clandestine affair.
    Indeed, the next day, at exactly 7:00 p.m., Berta Quiñones, the same woman who had greeted each of them that morning with a little present wrapped in tissue paper—perfume, a hair clip, a makeup bag, “which the Three Kings left by my fireplace for you because you’ve been so good”—asked them all to finish their work and go home.
    â€œExcept you, María,” she said, pointing at her with an accusatory finger. “I want you to stay a bit longer, please, because I really can’t get the accounts to add up. Let’s see if you can explain them to me.”
    María walked into Berta’s office with her head down.
    She was the first one to speak.
    â€œLook, Berta,” she defended herself, avoiding Berta’s questioning gaze, “marriage, contrary to what you might think, because you’ve never been married, so you haven’t been through these things, isn’t a bed of roses, you know? In fact, it’s the opposite: It’s a bramble patch perched on top of a cliff. You’ve no idea how hard it is not to end up plunging to the bottom.”
    â€œSure,” said her boss as quick as lightning, “and you’ve just smashed your head right open.”
    â€œTrue, I have, but not just now,” acknowledged María. “I’ve been living at the bottom of an abyss for a long time. What yousaw yesterday, contrary to what you think, is probably the thing that’ll save my marriage in the long run. I was dead, Berta, and now I’ve come back to life. Even my kids have noticed the difference: I’m the cheerful woman I once was, the woman who felt wanted and loved, who still believed she could be happy.”
    â€œCheating on your husband?” Berta threw at her.
    â€œI’m not cheating on him,” said María, defending herself tooth and nail, “quite the opposite. Whenever I sleep with my lover, I imagine I’m with Bernabé.”

CHAPTER 21
    S ometimes María regretted having married so young. If she’d been more patient and less desperate to get out of Urda, she wouldn’t have fled her parents’ house at nineteen with the first outsider who happened to pass through the village. But she was fed up with her life, and that’s what she told Bernabé on the riverbank—fed up with doing the chores at home, looking after her younger siblings, obeying her father’s tyrannical orders, and prodding her zombielike mother. Every day was spent rushing about, working like a slave, never stopping to wonder whether somewhere, not far away, there might be a better future.
    â€œI’d like to move to Madrid, get any old job to start with, study accounting, because that’s what really interests me, and then get a proper job, buy a flat, and be