by Paul Pen
When the voice asked the question for a third time, Grace had to decide whether she could forgive Mara. Whether her justifiable initial intentions and the goodwill of returning Audrey’s ferrets could be enough to begin to repair the damage that woman had caused, or whether she would continue to live in fear and resentment. Before answering, Grace looked at her daughter, at the pure joy flowing from her smile. She also looked at Simon, who was stroking the ferrets with tenderness, telling his sister he always knew they would come back home to her.
She hung up without saying anything.
She decided to accept Mara’s peace offering, and to let love and trust be the values that prevailed over hate and suspicion. She thought that, with little gestures like hers—the simple act of interrupting a call born from resentment—the pain in the world might slowly be reduced.
Grace left her cell phone on the countertop, next to the photograph in which she and Frank were rewinding a cassette with a pen, an image that Simon still used to talk to his father. Then Grace sat with her children, allowing the ferrets to climb on her body as well, the first time she’d ever let them do it. Somehow, the animals’ reappearance had restored her faith in the future, because she realized that if Hope and Joy could come back, many of the things she lost under the water could also return.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Seeing my books translated into English is a dream that, since The Light of the Fireflies was published, has continued to be fulfilled with each of my new novels. A beautiful dream I still haven’t woken up from thanks to my translator, Simon Bruni—a perfect replica of my voice in English—and my brilliant editor Elizabeth DeNoma; spectacular covers by artist David Drummond; and, of course, the tremendous AmazonCrossing team, whom I was lucky enough to meet in Seattle recently. With each new project, I feel that all of them—from production to design, from the copyeditor to the audiobook’s voice-over artists—look after and present my stories in the best way possible.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2019 Abel Trujillo
Paul Pen is a bestselling Spanish author whose four novels have been translated to English, German, Italian, Russian, and Turkish. His book The Light of the Fireflies has sold more than one hundred thousand copies worldwide, and his debut novel The Warning, which is soon to be published in English for the first time, was adapted to the big screen in 2018. Motion pictures of The Light of the Fireflies and Desert Flowers are also in development, the latter scripted by Pen himself. In his capacity as scriptwriter, Pen is working on a forthcoming Netflix series. The author returns in fall 2019 with the international release of his new novel Under the Water, bringing his unmistakable brand of literary suspense to readers around the globe.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2017 Colin Crewdson
Simon Bruni is a literary translator from Spanish, a language he acquired through “total immersion” living in Alicante, Valencia, and Santander. He studied Spanish and Linguistics at Queen Mary University of London and Literary Translation at the University of Exeter.
Simon’s many published translations include novels, short stories, videogames, and nonfiction publications, and he is the winner of three John Dryden awards: in 2017 and 2015 for Paul Pen’s short stories “Cinnamon” and “The Porcelain Boy,” and in 2011 for Francisco Pérez Gandul’s novel Cell 211. His translation of Paul Pen’s novel The Light of the Fireflies has sold over one hundred thousand copies worldwide.
For more information, please visit www.simonbruni.com.