The She-Devil in the Mirror

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HOW COULD SUCH A TRAGEDY HAVE HAPPENED, my dear? I just spent the whole morning with Olga María at her boutique at the Villas Españolas Mall, she had to check on a special order. It’s unbelievable. I still can’t believe it; it’s like a nightmare. I don’t know why they’re taking so long to get her ready: it’s already five thirty, and they still haven’t brought her out. It’s that magistrate, he took his sweet time. He’s a disgrace. The poor thing, stretched out there on her living room floor, everybody and his brother coming and going through the house. How horrible. They let me know right away: Sergio, Olga María’s brother, called my house and said something terrible had happened, Olga María had been “mortally wounded” during an attempted robbery. That’s what he said: “mortally wounded.” I couldn’t believe it — I’d been with her just an hour and a half earlier. We left the boutique and walked to the parking lot together. She said she was going to pick the girls up at school and then she’d call me in the afternoon. No wonder Sergio’s call caught me totally by surprise. I asked him which hospital they’d taken her to. He said she wasn’t in a hospital, she was lying dead on her living room floor, and Marito had taken the girls to Doña Olga’s. I was in shock. I couldn’t even react. Then I said, “I’m on my way.” I drove like a madwoman, like I was on drugs, my dear, I don’t know how I managed to avoid having an accident. So many images of her raced through my mind, and the last words we’d exchanged that morning, about how happy she was that sales at the boutique were up and about how she was trying to patch up her relationship with Marito. And then something like this — it’s so unfair.

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