Free She Walks in Shadows by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Paula R. Stiles

gray-green pellets, steam redolent of smoke and grass and iron, not your average cup of Darjeeling at all. The widow picked her cup up and adjusted her veil. The house was sweltering. I made another note: She ceases not her mourning, even in the privacy of her domicile, and now that I have intruded, she wishes to not be seen weeping.
    I thought about Cheltenwick’s ‘crystal droplet’ and cursed him. What would have been the harm, had we waited a month or a year? I already knew his answer, though: Someone else, some other newspaper, a loathed enemy of an editor, would have sent someone out before us and the story would not be exclusive. Damn him, for true. This poor, bereaved, dignified woman, drinking her tea with her veil on — not to mention depriving me of a good look at her face.
    I said, “You may be surprised to hear that no one knew your husband was ... was your husband. Which is to say, we had become quite used to hearing of Mr. Penhallick as an affirmed bachelor.”
    “No,” she said, a tone not quite of surprise but resignation, which I still had to strain to hear through her headgear. “That doesn’t surprise me, Mr. Greene. He’s ... he was a private man. To have even friends and family inquire about our marriage, let alone strangers, would have upset him greatly.”
    She had given me an opening; I dashed through it before it closed. “Oh, I agree, I quite agree; many of us corresponded with your husband and never met him in person. I believe he liked it that way — as you say. When were you married?”
    “Two years ago,” she said softly, putting her tea back down with shaking hands. “We made no announcement, although it was in the local registry, of course.”
    “Of course,” I said, irritated. How could we have missed that? One of the office toadies did nothing but scan the local and state registries for interesting stories. Man dies in tragic fall into river. Twins born to local industrial magnate. Marriage of world-renowned explorer to mystery ... beauty? Damn, damn, damn.
    Just as I began to speak again, she seemed to come to some kind of decision and with one swift movement, unpinned her hat and removed her veil. I froze to hide my surprise — then, to cover my obvious lack of movement, took a gulp of tea and burned my mouth. For his wife — whom he had legally married, God only knew how or where — was no purse-mouthed old bat from a leading family but a girl with the huge, steady eyes of a deer and burnished young skin as dark and flawless as the carved mahogany jaguar on the third stairstep. Her head was wrapped in a brightly patterned silk scarf, flowers and leaves and birds, underneath the black weeds. She smiled, seeing me so clearly discomfited, and put her hat and veil neatly on the table. “We did not announce it here, Mr. Greene.”
    “Er ... I ….” I swallowed, compounding my rudeness with a rude noise. “I did not mean to stare, madame. I only ….”
    “The story,” she said. “That’s what you want?”
    I nodded, half-holding my breath, as if it might break a spell. She sipped her tea and said, “Then come and look at the house with me.”
    We returned to the front hall and she led me up the stairs to the big map. She said, “My name is Sima. A name from my land. We met here.” She pointed to a place in Africa dense with pins where no borders had been marked. “My home is beautiful,” she went on, sitting smoothly and quite naturally on a stair; I moved down a decorous three steps.
    “Beautiful, Mr. Greene, and very, very old. I am not sure how old the nation of the white man is, but it was in its infancy when we had been who we were for fifty thousand years. And it was into this culture that my husband first strayed, more than ten years ago. I was young, and was not permitted to go with him and the men from my village as they explored the holy ruins nearby. But every evening when they returned, he would sit by the fire, tell stories ... he liked to draw