‘I am Ramona González, senor,’

Proserpina

After Lucien Delano left, the house seemed to be a hollow shell. I was pining for him, I thought in amazement when I found that I had been staring at the same page on the screen for an hour and had not made a single annotation, not a single new word typed in.

Wretched, I stood up and stretched. The happy gurgle of Rudy’s chuckles floated up from the lawn and I smiled. The boy was a charmer, and all the people who came in contact with him were eating out of his hand in no time.

My baby bump was negligible but I smiled as I placed my hand over my stomach and sighed.

I wanted my big lover to dominate me in bed again. The enormous bed in our suite seemed empty and when I went to bed, I curled up in the middle and I felt as though I was alone in the middle of an island.

*

I watched as the bright red Beetle, Aiyana’s car, drove up to the door and I sighed. She visited him every day, standing at the window, staring out, her face hard and grey with worry. The woman truly loved him