Free The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy

and watched the bright point of Barbara's flashlight move across the plaza to the women's hut. Barbara and Diane were shadows in the distance.
    This daughter of mine was as cool as if she were encased in glass, shielded from the world by an invisible protective barrier. She was not unfriendly: during dinner she had smiled and joked with the others.
    But she seemed cautious, wary, and even when she removed her sunglasses, I could not begin to guess what she was thinking. I lit my cigarette, cupping my hand to protect the flame from the evening breeze, then shook the burning match to blow it out. Tony sat beside me, nursing a drink. I think it was his fourth.
    In the corner of the plaza, not far from the table where the students played their interminable game of cards, a loincloth-clad Toltec priest was scraping remnants of flesh from the hide of a newly killed jaguar.
    A smoking torch cast red light on his bare back and shoulders; at his side, incense burned in a pottery vessel shaped like a jaguar. As he worked, he chanted incessantly, and his voice competed with the rock-and-roll tapes playing on Carlos's cassette player.
    "Your daughter is a very nice young woman," Tony said. "I think she'll fit right in."
    I said nothing. The priest chanted and the rock-and-roll band sang about love.
    "Did you have a nice chat when you took her around the site?"
    "Curious, aren't you?"
    "Yes." He leaned back in his chair. The hand holding his glass of gin was propped up on one knee; the empty hand on the other. He was waiting. A moth was battering its head against the glass chimney of the lantern. I dimmed the light and moved it to the other end of the table, but the insect circled, found the lamp again, and continued its efforts to die.
    "I don't understand what she wants from me," I said finally.
    "Didn't you ask her that?" Tony said.
    "I did. She said she wanted to dig up the past and see what was under the rubble."
    He nodded.
    For a moment we listened to the slap of the cards, the low murmur of the students' conversation, and the soft whir of the cassette player rewinding. The priest had stopped his wailing and I could hear the scrape of the obsidian knife against the hide. I realized that I was holding the burning cigarette, but not smoking. I took a long drag and exhaled slowly.
    "I don't understand what she's doing here," I said abruptly. "It's all past history. I left her. Why should she look to me for comfort now?"
    "Is she looking to you for comfort?"
    "She's looking for her mother. I'm nobody's mother."
    "Then she'll figure that out," he said. "And then she'll go. Is that what you want?"
    I shrugged, unable to say what I wanted. "That would be fine," I said. "Just fine."
    "All right," Tony said. "Maybe that will happen."
    We sat quietly for a while. The priest resumed his chanting, but the card game seemed to be winding down. Carlos had his arm around Maggie's shoulders and the two of them were laughing a great deal.
    "She seems to have hit it off with Barbara," I said.
    "True. And having another person on survey isn't a bad idea."
    "I suppose." I frowned out at the darkness. "I wonder why she's so wary. I suppose that's Robert's doing."
    "Give the woman a chance, Liz," he said. "Just give her a chance."
    "She seems bright enough," I said grudgingly.
    "That's something."
    "All right," I said. "It was brave of her to come down here by herself. Is that what you're waiting for?"
    He shrugged. "I'm not waiting for anything. I was just thinking that arriving unannounced seemed like the sort of thing that you would have done in her position."
    "I suppose you're right," I admitted reluctantly.

    "I think I am."
    Carlos reached over to the tape player and the music clicked off. Carlos and Maggie headed off, arm in arm, on the path to the cenote, talking in loud whispers. John and Robin headed toward their huts. Tony poured himself one more drink. "You ever going to sleep?" he asked.
    "Later," I said. "I'm not tired yet."
    "It'll be all