He was wearing a blue shirt and jeans, and he looked as alive as ever.
“But how can this be? Your body was found with your identification on it.”
He came closer and sat at the foot of my bed.
“I had heard many stories about people crossing the desert illegally into America,” he began. “Some were stopped by bandits, as we were, and made to strip, the way Pancho was made to strip in the cave. Their clothes were taken, and they wandered about until they found a corpse and took off its clothes. Identities were lost or exchanged, and many families never knew and still don’t know what actually happened to their loved ones.
“Our bandits were only interested in my money. After you escaped from the cave, they stopped me from escaping. We fought and struggled, and one of them hit me hard on the back of my head.” He turned to show me the bandaged wound. “When I woke, they were gone. I still had water and food. They left both our knapsacks, so I started out. I got a little lost and spent a night alone, thinking I would surely die. Somehow, I managed to get back on the right path. Saint Christopher was with me, surely.
“I heard voices and headed in their direction, and there, leading a dozen or so pollos, was Pancho. He was so amazed at the sight of me he nearly passed out. He told me how he had gotten you to Sasabe, but of course, he was afraid I would tell how he had deserted me. He admitted that he was prepared to tell my father’s friend that I had died in the desert at the hands of bandits, but he would surely tell the story so as to make himself look less cowardly.
“It was then that the idea occurred to me to give him my identification and have him tell his story. He explained how I should continue, and I made it to Sasabe and then found my way to your village.”
“But your family, they think you are dead. They mourn you.”
“They know the truth. Yes, they mourn me anyway, because my identity is dead, and their son is still gone, but I am going back someday, Delia. I will find a way. It might not be for some time, but I swear I will do this.”
“I believe you will, Ignacio,” I said. Then I told him what Edward had written about his friends and about the police.
“I know about your grandmother dying,” he said. “When I reached your village, I stopped at a café to ask where she lived, and they told me she had died.”
“Before I got home,” I said sadly. “I never got to say good-bye, Ignacio.”
“Maybe that was good. She died thinking you were still in the United States living with your rich aunt. So,” he said, smiling and taking my hand, “now you have no more reason to remain here. You can go back. Contact your aunt. Perhaps she will send money for you.”
“Mi primo Edward already has,” I said, and showed him the money order I had on the small bedside table.
He looked at it and nodded. “This is good.”
“I wasn’t going to go back,” I said. “My grandmother had arranged for the sale of our house, and it is sold.”
“So?”
“Friends of my grandmother have arranged a marriage for me.”
“To someone you have always loved?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “To someone I have not even liked and rarely have spoken to.”
“And you will go through with this wedding, this marriage? You will stay here?”
I didn’t answer, and he leaped up from my bed and began to pace.
“You would stay here and condemn yourself to this life? You would have been better off dying in that desert! You would marry someone you do not love? You would…”
“Stop, Ignacio,” I said, now laughing through my happy tears.
He paused and looked at me, the candlelight flickering over his face.
I picked up the money order and waved it at him.
“Don’t disguise yourself so much that I won’t recognize you when you go back,” I said.
His smile was bigger than sunlight, for it relit my soul to brighten me inside with the reverence of a church candle lit to keep the memory of loved ones alive.
I had escaped the third death, too.
Epilogue