It was very different for me leaving this time. Before, I had been terribly sad, but I had hopes of returning and visiting my grandmother. I had nothing to return to now but my parents’ graves, and those of my grandmother and other family members. I would visit, I was sure, but not for some time, and I would carry them with me in my heart, anyway.
Ignacio and I spent the night together. In the morning, he accompanied me to see Señora Paz and her sister and give them the news. They were so shocked they were speechless for once.
“You must give my apologies to Señora Rubio and Pascual,” I said.
They simply stared at me and Ignacio.
“I will be eternally grateful for your efforts to help me find a future,” I told them. “I’ll write to you.” Neither had said a word yet.
Margarita started to cry.
“Stop acting like a fool,” Señora Paz told her. “She has a better offer.”
“I am not crying for her,” Margarita confessed. “I am crying for myself. I wish I had run off when I was her age, too.”
I hugged her and then Señora Paz. Ignacio and I boarded the same bus to travel together for a while. He would go to Mexico City, too, but there we would part at the bus station, where I was taking a shuttle to the airport. Thanks to Edward, all my documentation would be there for my second crossing into America.
I had called Edward, and he was very excited about my return. He told me he and Jesse would be waiting for me at the Palm Springs airport.
“This time, it will be different, Delia. I promise,” he said.
He was sincere, but I had no illusions about it. I was about to begin what might be an even more difficult journey to another future. There were still many ghosts and many demons hovering in anticipation, and I would forever be looking over my shoulder for Señora Porres’s evil eye, the ojo malvado.
Ignacio stood with me at the bus door until the driver said it was absolutely time to go.
“Don’t go rushing into another marriage before I get back,” he told me.
“I won’t. I promise.”
“I will cross again, Delia, even if I have to battle the desert to get to you.”
“I’ll be waiting,” I said, and we kissed.
I stepped up and entered the bus to take my seat by a window.
One time, when I had accompanied Abuela Anabela to the cemetery to be with her when she visited the grave of my grandfather, I asked her if it was not better to forget after all, to suffer less pain.
“No,” she said. “He has passed on, but our love for each other has not. The memory of that stops the pain, Delia. Without that, yes, there is less reason to go to the cemetery, less reason not to forget. But what you are left with is an emptiness you will never fill. Love keeps us from living alone.”
“Sí, Abuela Anabela,” I whispered as the bus started away and Ignacio pressed his lips to his hand and waved after me, “I will not be alone. Gracias, mi abuela.”