The Spanish Daughter(86)

I headed toward the creek. I needed to think about what had just happened. I needed to understand what I was feeling, to put my thoughts in order. A tingling sensation ran through my body, energizing me. I had an urge to break something.

Things had not gone as I expected them to at all.

But what had I been expecting? Welcome hugs? Tears?

Not after my deception.

“Nobody wanted you here. Nobody.”

Elisa’s words kept ringing in my mind.

None of them had denied what she’d said. They weren’t even mildly relieved that I was still alive. Though I understood their surprise and shock, their coldness hurt. It reminded me that I didn’t mean anything to them, that they didn’t know me. They only knew the fa?ade of Cristóbal.

And that was my own fault.

Not even Catalina seemed pleased. And I thought she genuinely liked me.

I didn’t stop until I reached the neighbor’s house.

Don Fernando stopped cold when he saw me sitting in his parlor in men’s clothing but without looking particularly masculine with no facial hair or spectacles.

“Se?or . . . ?”

“Se?ora,” I said. “I’m María Purificación de Lafont y Toledo, Don Armand’s oldest daughter.”

Such was his shock that instead of shaking my hand, he sat on the couch, gaping.

“But I thought Do?a Purificación passed away. At least that was the rumor around town.”

I shook my head.

“Wait, weren’t you supposed to be her husband?”

I explained to him, as succinctly as I could, the entire situation. By the end, he had an amused expression on his face that I didn’t particularly care for. Still, I proposed a deal to him. If he let me stay in his house while the inheritance was being processed and distributed, I would renegotiate with him, in more favorable terms, the border issue that had caused such a headache for him and my father. My siblings might not be happy with the agreement, but it was about time that I started making decisions regarding the plantation—it was what my father had wanted. And maybe he had a good reason for it.

Don Fernando looked at me with apprehension, but after a moment, he smiled.

“All right, you have a deal, Do?a Puri.”

“One more thing,” I said, before shaking hands with him. “I’ll need you to send one of your employees to collect all my things from my father’s hacienda. I don’t want to set foot there until this is all over.”

*

Things were far from over, though. The next few days proved challenging. I remained locked in my neighbor’s house, the odd guest wearing his employee’s dresses and occasionally my husband’s trousers. Don Fernando was not as annoying as I’d originally thought. He’d traveled widely and offered interesting conversations about the places he’d visited in Latin America and Europe. He was fond of bullfighting, one of the most popular activities in my hometown, and enjoyed a good meal and drinks after dinner. The more enthusiastic the story, the more he snorted.

In the beginning, he couldn’t make sense of me and whether he should treat me as a man or a woman. It was apparent that neither one of us could forget that he’d punched me once, though we never mentioned it. Yet, the memory was always there, in the middle of our conversations and our silences, though it seemed like it had happened in another lifetime.

Thanks to Don Fernando’s assistance, I paid a visit to Aquilino in Guayaquil and brought all the paperwork to prove my true identity. He promised he would start moving things along, but he was sorry to say that an unexpected event had taken place: my three siblings had united in contesting the will, claiming that my father had not been in his right mind when he wrote the inheritance.

The news felt like a bucket of iced water thrown in my face.

Aquilino added that the day I’d left the hacienda, the authorities had taken Elisa to Guayaquil. She was now in custody until a trial date was set.

I was conflicted by the news. On one hand, I was glad that justice for my husband would finally be served, but I couldn’t help but think of the little girl who wrote those letters to my father—how much she’d wanted to be loved by him, how much she’d wanted to better herself by attending school and learning. A spirit like that didn’t deserve to be imprisoned by the past. It was ironic that, like me, she’d tried to connect with my father through incessant letters.

By now, Soledad must have learned the truth about her son, too. I felt sorry for her, but Franco had made his own decisions and unfortunately she would have to live with the consequences.

I’d thought that knowing the truth—finding Cristóbal’s killer—would give me peace of mind, but I was more heartbroken than ever.

As I held the ticket for the ship that would take me to Panama to give my husband a proper burial, I thought of Cristóbal and how na?vely he’d followed me across the ocean, unaware that this trip would signify the end of his life and his dreams. Yes, he deserved justice. He deserved all the things I’d taken away from him. For the first time, I admitted that it had been a mistake to come here. I’d ruined the lives of all of those around me—not just Cristóbal’s. As I lifted my skirt to board the ship, I couldn’t help but think of Martin.

Aside from Cristóbal, Martin was the only other man I’d ever been intimate with. I couldn’t dismiss what we’d done—what I felt for him—as if it was a casual act like drinking a glass of water. Perhaps he could do that, but I couldn’t. Not only had I disgraced my husband’s name by being intimate with another man out of wedlock and so soon after his passing, but on top of it all, Martin had been my sister’s lover. I was so humiliated, so vexed. And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I hadn’t seen him or heard from him in days. I was certain that by now, everybody in town knew that I’d been staying at Del Río’s hacienda.