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reminded. Buena’s had been the only welcoming face she’d encountered that day. The others—Juan Pedro’s family, his children, had stared sullenly at her over their glasses of chilled Ravel Manzanilla sherry, then had kissed the air next to her cheek.
    â€œYou were so lovely, Señora,” Buena said, stepping aside so Lorenza could enter. “All in white satin, with a long train embroidered with pearls and a white orchid in your hair.”
    â€œAnd Juan Pedro’s gold ring on my finger. The family didn’t like that then, Buena. And you know only too well, they don’t like it today. To them I was always the interloper, stealing their mother’s thunder, even her name. Of course, I understood. She died too young. But I was young too, and it was my wedding day and I was damned if I was going to knuckle under and wear a beige dress and a hat. I wanted Juan Pedro to see me as his bride.”
    Lorenza’s dark eyes crinkled with laughter as she met Buena’s. “After all, he had to see he was getting his money’s worth, didn’t he?”
    She looked around her house. It had started life a couple of centuries ago as a tiny theater, dedicated to operetta, the only reminders of which were the two ornate little boxes curving out from the mezzanine, one each side of the wide marble staircase. Their red plush upholstery had faded to a silvery blush, entwined cupids blew golden trumpets across their stucco fronts, and pairs of narrow wooden doors, pale green and gilt, enclosed their privacy.
    Naturally, there had been stories of a shadowy “diva,” a ghostly lady in an elegant wide-brimmed hat and a gleam of diamonds. She was, so the story went, still waiting for the lover who never showed up.
    â€œThen she should get herself up and out and get another lover,” practical Lorenza snapped, when Juan Pedro first told her the tale. She had no time for ghosts. Of course she had never seen her. “That’s because no ‘other woman’ would dare show her face in Lorenza’s house,” her husband had said, laughing. And that was probably true.
    To the left was the salón, used only for formal parties, and later for Juan Pedro’s memorial. His “wake” as Lorenza preferred to call it, because she liked the way the Irish gave a party to say goodbye to the dead instead of a somber meeting.
    To the right was the formal dining room, painted on her orders, a glowing yellow that at night reflected the candlelight like sunshine. They had held dinner parties for twenty there, with her favorite old-fashioned Coquille St. Jacques—scallops on the half shell—for starters and chocolate/sherry soufflés for dessert, served with the local Catalonian white wine with its slight fizz known as Txakoli, as well as a good deep red from Rioja.
    Looking round, Lorenza now said to Buena, “We built memories around that table.”
    â€œAnd you will again, Señora,” Buena said firmly, following her as she walked down the hall to the library.
    The door was open and Lorenza stood there, looking into her past, seeing herself and Juan Pedro, him on the sofa with the cat lolling against him, and she opposite, long legs tucked under, listening to Joni Mitchell singing about tearing down paradise and putting up parking lots, or else the soft Brazilian sambas of Bebel Gilberto, and sometimes Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony played so loud her husband would cover his ears, groaning. She’d watch him reading the morning papers, catching up with the news, checking his messages on the laptop he hated because he was old enough to prefer things on paper that he could handle, and not messages winged at him through thin air.
    He was still so good-looking; those fine wide cheekbones held his face firmly, his chin had only a hint of fullness—she would never call it “sag”—his deep-set eyes under the heavy brows, his sensual mouth