She spent more and more time with Soledad. One day, she packed a small bag in Delfina’s home while Delfina was at El Mercado, and after she left, she did not return. Soledad gave her a small cama in her own home, on the northern edge of Obregán, and Jovana dived into her new life, her new destiny.
More years passed. She forgot about Delfina and what that woman had done for her. So when Jovana walked by a stall in El Mercado and Delfina sat there, her face twisted in shock, it took a moment to remember who la vieja was. Jovana drifted forward, a smile on her face, and she stretched out her hands. “Do you have a story to tell, señora?”
Delfina jerked her body away from Jovana and said nothing.
Jovana never saw Delfina again.
Years passed again, and then one day, Jovana knew she was ready. The people of Obregán, of aldeas near and far, were desperate to see “la madre e hija,” las cuentistas reunited by the power of faith, and both were busy taking stories, selling salvation, and using those stories to give themselves a life of comfort and extravagance.
But Jovana knew she could get even more. She knew she could be more if she eliminated her final obstacle. She found the solution in Cruz, a man who crafted fine metal blades and knives, who had given his stories of volatile rage and anger to Soledad for years. Jovana found him at night, when El Mercado was still open but much quieter. He was drunk, as he usually was when he’d had a bad day of sales. He was unaware that it was not the quality of his work that drove people from him, but his demeanor.
Jovana knew that he was perfect for this.
She walked up to his display, and he grunted at her. “Tell Soledad I have nothing for her today,” he said. “Maybe next week.”
“I’m here for you,” she said, and she fluttered her long lashes at him.
He grunted again. “Not my type.”
“I have a story for you, Cruz.”
He raised an eyebrow. “No soy cuentista. And I have Soledad. What use are you to me?”
She looked around her, to sell him on the idea that what she was about to say was a secret. “I took Soledad’s story.”
He said nothing; his eyebrow was still raised.
“I have not given it back to Solís, because … well, it doesn’t feel right to. Not when I know what she did.”
“Chica, please tell me what this has to do with me.”
She leaned in.
She breathed out.
“She has never returned your stories to Solís. She kept them all.”
Then she leaned forward, even closer. She told him a small detail, something that she herself had heard Cruz tell Soledad barely a week ago, while she was hiding behind their stall.
He didn’t move at first. Then he set his drink down and stood up. He looked at her, his face blank and unresponsive, and then he reached up and picked the longest, sharpest blade off his wall.
Jovana stood there for nearly a quarter hour. Waiting. Then she slowly walked back to Soledad’s stall, each step powerful, sure. When she entered it, Cruz was long gone. She stepped over the body, then picked up a sage candle that rested on Soledad’s—no, her—altar. She licked her thumb and used it to wipe away the splash of blood that had trickled down the side of it.
I think I’ll change my name, she thought.
She is sorry, Solís. But only now. Only because she got caught.
Soledad crumpled there, sobbing and wheezing, and she kept saying that she was sorry, that she had thought los cuentistas died out, that I had to tell Solís that she was never going to do this again.
But I remained motionless. I had kept stories. They surged in me again: Lito’s terror, Marisol’s guilt, Emilia’s rage. I had not returned them either. Did it matter that I had not made money from them? Did it matter that I was not turning one person against another for my own gain? How was I any better?
How had she not been punished, when it felt so obvious to me that You were punishing me?
That emotion overpowered them all. A rage, pure and fiery, ran through my veins, overpowering the others.
What was real anymore? Were the stories of Solís y los cuentistas even true? Was everything in my life a lie?
I tried to say something, but the words would not form on my tongue. I swayed as I stood, my world spinning around me.
Soledad cried out again, implored me to stay, to teach her what she did wrong. “Please,” she said. “Don’t leave me.”
Emilia was still standing there, shaking as she tried to hold me upright. “We have to go,” she said.
My head was still swirling and reeling, still trying to process what I had learned.
“What do you want? What can I give you?” Soledad stood and searched her altar. “More coins? Please let me give you something.”
“You don’t have what I need,” I spat out, the anger finally getting the best of me. “How could you? How could you take something so sacred and ruin it?”
She spread her arms, and her cheeks were still wet and puffy from the tears. “At least let me try to make things better, señorita. Please.”
She held her hands up to me.
It was so pitiful.
But was I any better than she was? Hadn’t I lied, hadn’t I kept secrets from
