Right to Die

wine bottle and a single, clear glass, like an iced tea tumbler. Roja’s hands were folded in her lap, chin tilted into the sun, eyes closed.
    I walked outside, the breeze freshening as I reached her. Resplendent in a long-sleeved dress over sandals, she turned her head slowly to me. The black hair was slicked back, held in place by dainty silver combs. As her eyes opened, a lazy smile crossed her face.
    “Not surprised, Inés?”
    “I was expecting you.” She motioned at the other chair. “You will have some cider?”
    “No thanks.”
    “A pity. It is new sidra, just opened. It will be very sweet.”
    “No.”
    When I stayed standing, Roja got to her feet, picking up the bottle in one hand, the glass in the other. She held the bottle high over her head and the tumbler at waist level.
    Pouring three inches of cloudy yellow liquid in an exaggerated arc into the tumbler, Roja said, “To carbonate the sidra.” She held the glass up to the sunlight and spoke to it. “The professor is dead, then?”
    I waited a beat. “Yes.”
    A dreamy smile this time. “And you have come to kill me.”
    “No, Inés.”
    “Then to... arrest me.”
    I didn’t say anything to that.
    Roja shook her head. After drinking the cider down, she poured another few ounces. Back in her chair, Roja set the bottle on the table and sipped from the glass. “Sit, John.”
    I couldn’t see any weapons. Angling the empty chair away from the cliff, I sank into it. “You seem awfully at home here for a refugee from Cuba .”
    Roja closed her eyes. “If you have come this far, that tragic tale no longer persuades you.”
    “It doesn’t. Still, the Marielito story was clever: nobody would inquire too much about a Cuba you never knew. Of course, your father didn’t die on a boat at sea.”
    A small grimace.
    “Your father committed suicide, here in Candás. Just after his cover-up came to light.”
    “Does it amuse you to hurt me, John?”
    Roja’s tone was flat, emotionless.
    I short-formed Steven O’Brien’s clippings in Providence . “Your father was Luis Loredo Mendez, basically the local prosecutor. His old friend Dr. Enrique was dying. The doctor had saved the life of the prosecutor’s young wife, Monica Roja Berrocal, in childbirth. Your mother, Inés, having you. Your father looked the other way when Maisy Andrus helped the doctor along. When everything came out, your father was disgraced.”
    Tears began to gather next to the nose under each lid. “He killed himself, you and your mother leaving Spain for New York . Eventually, you found out that Andrus was still rich and famous, while you and your mother—•”
    “Lived in a rathole, John.” Same flat tone, no trace of rancor. “A vile, crumbling tenement in the Bronx . I spent years thinking about Maisy Andrus, about what she had done to my family. While my mother died slowly, cleaning for other people of means like the good professor.”
    I lowered my voice. “So you got the job as her secretary in Boston .”
    “Yes.”
    “How?”
    Roja finished her glass and poured some more, minus the exaggerated arc. “It was easy. Growing up in New York , I read the newspapers, articles about the great Maisy Andrus. Giant of the law, champion of those without hope. But I never forgot what she did to us. Last year, the week my mother died, I saw such an article. It was... intolerable. I took the train to Boston . I went to the law school, to see Andrus. To think out a proper way to kill her.
    “But the great professor was interviewing for a new secretary that day. She came from her office, hardly glancing at me. ‘Are you my next interview?’ she said. Realizing she did not recognize me, I said yes. In her office, Andrus said, ‘What is your name?’ I replied in the American fashion, ‘Inés L. Roja.’ I was thinking to add ‘The “L” is for Loredo,’ my father’s surname, when she said, ‘I have property in Spain . If you speak Spanish, it would be a great help to me.’ If Andrus had not done that, I don’t know how I would have dealt with her.”
    “But she did.”
    “So poor with the memory of names, so ignorant of our language and culture. She did not recognize even my mother’s surname.”
    “And that gave you the idea.”
    “Yes.” The dreamy smile again. “Manolo had never met me here, and her stepson Ramón never visited the law school or her home in Boston . I decided it would be better to stay close to her for a time. To make her die slowly,