"Why did you do that, Angelina?"
"To help me forget her."
"Forget her ... we mustn't forget her."
"Don't you understand that I miss her ... I miss her all the time ... I don't need her photograph. Can't you see that things can be so bitter ... can't you accept how I feel?" She spoke without rebuke, as though to herself.
They lapsed into silence; the rain beat across the veranda, across the tiles; somewhere a shutter thudded; somewhere children babbled.
"We should have saved her," said Gabriel, stirring his coffee.
"How could we have saved her?"
"The Indians know many ways of curing dysentery."
"Then why don't they cure their own little ones? We see them die every year. Gabriel, the haciendas are littered with their graves."
She remembered playing with Concepción, Miguelito, Trinita, Pepe—dear faces, Petaca's dead children! Her love for them choked her.