Free The Blue Line by Ingrid Betancourt

to draw him if you like.”
    He was a man with delicate features—quite a good-looking fellow, with big eyes and thick, dark eyebrows. He had his hair parted on one side, an impeccably drawn mustache over thin lips, and a slight double chin that aged him. Mama Fina went out with Julia’s sketch in her pocket. She left her some freshly brewed maté and orders to rest. But Julia did nothing of the sort. She couldn’t just sit there. What if it was already too late?
    Julia headed to Retiro, near the railroad line, where she knew she might find Father Mugica. She went into Villa 31 and wandered through the maze of shacks piled up against each other, bag clasped firmly under her arm. By now she was a regular visitor. She recognized faces; a few children called out to her by name. She went up to them, one after another, to ask if they knew where Father Mugica was. No one had seen him. Then she went to the Chapel of Christ the Worker but had no luck there either.
    Julia realized it was already quite late. She glanced at her watch. Theo would be arriving at Mama Fina’s any momentnow. He went with her every day to the cooperative to open up the health center. She had no way to get in touch with him. Never mind. She would just have to do the return trip twice.
    When she got home, it was Theo who gave her the information she needed. “He’s probably at home, at his parents’ place in calle Gelly y Obes,” he told her.
    He wanted to know why she was in such urgent need of Father Carlos’s assistance. Julia claimed that some drugs had gone missing from the health center and she needed him to go with her to the police station.
    â€œYou go to Retiro,” Theo said, taking charge of the situation. “I’ll see if I can find him at his place. We’ll meet up at the health center.”
    Theo knew nothing of Julia’s journeys or the strange lineage to which she belonged. She hadn’t attempted to explain it to him for fear he would think she was mad. Theo knew Julia had occasional fainting fits, but he simply thought she suffered from low blood pressure, quite common in young women, according to Gabriel.
    In fact, it had taken Julia a very long time to accept that she was normal. She had kept to herself as a child, fearing she would go into a trance at school and people would think she was crazy. It was only recently that she’d really begun to open up to other people, and this mainly because of Theo. But her newfound confidence was also the result of maturity. She had learned to exercise some control over her departures intotrance, and Mama Fina, who embraced her role as mentor, pushed Julia increasingly to take the initiative and make contact with her sources.
    A few months previously, Julia had been tempted to share her secret with Theo. Each time she’d hinted at it, though, Theo had made fun of her, until one day he had rebuffed her outright. “Look, I’m a rational being. Only fools buy all this stuff about premonitions and clairvoyance!”
    Julia had been shaken, and all her childish insecurity had resurfaced painfully. It had even occurred to her that perhaps she had inherited a deformity, not a gift.
    She had only recently managed to articulate her unease. How could she not rebel against being involuntarily projected into the critical moment in another person’s life? Why should she agree to get mixed up in somebody else’s private life? It was no longer the fear of being judged by Theo that dogged her. On the contrary, since she’d decided to keep her secret from him, Julia felt more adult, so to speak. It was the realization that her power was backfiring on her and profoundly affecting her own freedom.
    This latest journey had been a traumatic experience. Did she really have a choice in the face of the terrible crime she had foreseen? Could she escape this appointment with someone else’s fate, the outcome of which filled her with such