Marco hesitated. Elena saw the hesitation and hated it and needed it and waited through it.
"He wants to see you," Marco said. "Before the end. He wants both of his daughters in the same room. Carmen was supposed to find a way to tell you. She kept losing her nerve. I drove her to the hospital so she could sit with him. I drove her back. Twice a week. Last Thursday she left the perfume in the cup holder by accident. I meant to return it. Sofia found it first."
Elena pressed her fingertips to her eyelids until colors bloomed. The perfume. Rosa de Medianoche. She had given it to Carmen the night before Carmen's twenty-first birthday, when Carmen still believed she could become anything, when Elena still believed she could save her. Carmen had worn it to every celebration afterward until the celebrations stopped and the disappearances began. Elena had assumed the bottle had been sold for cash in some parking lot she would never see. Finding it intact in her own house felt like being haunted by a kindness she had once been capable of.
"You should have told me the first day," she said.
"I know."
"You let me fold towels and pack lunches and live inside a marriage I thought had no secret rooms."
"I know."