Free The Years That Followed by Catherine Dunne Page A

visible: another wimple that shadows her broad, pale features. Shock makes her outrage impotent.
    Then Pilar turns on her heel and leaves, dragging her one suitcase behind her. As she steps outside, she can feel the eyes of Sister Florencia upon her.
    She hopes that the young nun will understand. She hopes that she can forgive her. Pilar decides that she will visit her, soon, in the clinic where Sister Florencia helps out three days a week. She deserves an explanation. She deserves to have all her kindnesses acknowledged.
    * * *
    And now it is Sunday morning, and Pilar is in El Rastro. Here, in Madrid’s biggest flea market, there is everything she could possibly want: an Aladdin’s cave of furniture, bedding, ceramics, paintings, crockery, cutlery. Not all of it is rubbish, and Pilar has discovered thatthe past few years of looking and not buying have helped her develop a discerning eye. The stallholders have gotten to know her, and now they shout over to her, all of them vying for her attention.
    She knows that she looks purposeful this morning; she also knows she looks pretty. She’s had her hair done—a French plait with interwoven scarlet ribbons. And she wears a new skirt and blouse, both bargains from last week’s shopping. She stands out from the pressing crowd of tired middle-aged women. They look down at heel, those women, with their disappointed faces and their sharp-tongued observations. They poke about the fabrics, turning tablecloths over with disdainful, grubby fingers, rummaging through the stallholders’ careful arrangement of goods. Pilar wonders how these patient men and women keep their sense of humor.
    â€œLook here, señorita, and look no further! Quality you will find nowhere else! Come, come, look and linger—no charge for that.”
    And Pilar does look. She looks and she lingers and she drives bargains that please her. She loves the busyness of the market and goes there week after week. And week after week, she transforms her portería .
    She buys rugs, wall hangings, pretty sheets, lacy tablecloths and napkins. She spends from her substantial savings as she has never spent before.
    And then, just as suddenly, she stops.
    Mamá taught her that, too. Decide your budget. Stick to it. Don’t be wasteful.
    Pilar has already been to a proper shop, though, somewhere that sells real antiques, not the bric-a-brac of a Sunday flea market. A few weeks back, she’d put on her best dress and shoes, along with her most confident air, and she’d pushed open the door of Alcocer Anticuarios on Calle Santa Catalina.
    If the quiet, suited man who greeted her had been surprised at her youth, or at the unusually good quality of her footwear, he gave no sign. He was courtesy itself. He showed Pilar the ceramics she asked to see, and the nineteenth-century furniture she had read about in the library, and the pieces of sculpture she ached to touch. He had even handed her some of the pieces, as though he’d already intuited her need. Her fingers had trembled as she’d touched them. She knew it must be vulgar to ask “How much?” as there were no prices displayed anywhere, not on the gleaming furniture or the jewelry or the paintings. Just a discreet white ticket, tied on with fine string, with the year, the city of provenance, and some symbols that Pilar did not yet understand.
    â€œMay I show you anything else, señorita?”
    Pilar took this as a polite signal that it was time for her to leave.
    â€œNot today, thank you,” she said. “But I appreciate your kindness. And I shall be back.”
    The man smiled at her. “Somehow, I have no doubt of that,” he said. “I look forward to it.”
    Pilar is as good as her word.
    For the next twenty-five years, the shop on Calle Santa Catalina provides her with all that she needs. Pilar loves the scents of the interior, the quiet intimations of luxury, of wealth. The hush that