Free After the War: A Novella of the Golden City by J. Kathleen Cheney Page A

He was thoroughly annoyed with Old Alejandro. That Alejandro had agreed to marry her, but made her feel small and encroaching in the process. Had that been meanness on his part? Or had he simply been angry?
    Serafina sniffled again. “I don’t know . . .”
    Alejandro took her webbed hand in his and kissed her knuckles. “Then let me be clear about it now. I love you Serafina, and I don’t want you to forget that.”
    She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, but then leaned up to kiss him, and soon they were no longer talking.
    
    Saturday, 26 June, 1920
    Joaquim met Alejandro in the library after breakfast. “I had the feeling you needed to talk.”
    Alejandro shut the library door and turned back to face his brother, the voice of sanity in the chaos of his life. “Did I love her? She doesn’t think I did, you know.”
    Joaquim rubbed one hand down his face. “How do I answer that?”
    “Truthfully, please.”
    Joaquim sat down on the couch and stretched out his bad leg. “You always looked after her. When you were younger, you saw her as a responsibility.”
    Alejandro leaned back against the library table and folded his arms across his chest. “You said I planned to marry her. Was that because I knew I would? Only because I knew I would?”
    Joaquim closed his eyes, seeming pained. “When you left for Coimbra, Serafina was only thirteen. Between then and the day you married her, you only saw her for a handful of days out of any year. I don’t know how you could have developed a mature love in that time.”
    In other words, Serafina had been right. Or her mother had, in that he’d married her only because he’d said he would. Because he’d predicted it. “That seems unkind of me.”
    “Marriages are often arranged with the two parties barely knowing one another,” Joaquim said. “Love can grow from that. Look at Serafina’s father and mother. Marcos and Safira had no choice, but they came to love each other deeply.”
    After Safira was imprisoned in Spain, Marcos had been kidnapped by his own grandmother and thrown in a cell with Safira. If that hadn’t happened, Alejandro wouldn’t have Serafina now.
    Alejandro pinched the bridge of his nose. In a few hours, he was supposed to meet Markovich at the police station. When he regained his memory, would he be that former self again? Would he become that young man who wasn’t considerate enough to tell his young wife that he loved her . . . even as he was in bed with her? If nothing else, he should have lied to spare Serafina’s feelings. “Apparently Old Alejandro never even bothered to tell his wife he loved her,” he admitted.
    Joaquim’s lips pressed closed as he thought through his response. “Did you tell her now?”
    “Yes.”
    “Then you have a chance to set everything right with her.”
    Alejandro pushed himself away from the table. If he’d been a seer before, would he have foreseen that? Would he have seen losing his memory as a way to start over? “Was she in love with someone else?” he asked. “With Miguel?”
    Joaquim considered before answering. “My impression has always been that they are friends, brought together by family ties and a love of poetry. Perhaps you should ask one of them.”
    It would have been better if Joaquim had said no. Alejandro sighed. “Was I happy before? I don’t mean about Serafina. I mean . . . in general.”
    Joaquim sat back and gazed at him. “I think you always felt responsible for everything. Rafael says seers often feel that way. They want to prevent every bad thing they foresee.”
    Joaquim was a seer as well; but, as Alejandro understood it, Joaquim’s gift was very weak, subsumed by his finder’s gift. Rafael was the powerful one. Even so, Rafael seemed content with his life.
    “How does he deal with that?” Alejandro asked.
    “He’s trained not to take more on his shoulders than he can bear. He doesn’t try to save the world. Even when you were young, that’s