The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(48)

Not as much as she should given how we struggle to find good food for her, but I don’t tell him that.

“She’s wonderful. You’d be so proud of her. She misses you and can’t wait until we are all together again. And your mother is so proud of you.”

“And how are all of you?” Mateo asks. “Truly. You don’t have to pretend with me. You don’t have to protect me, too. They say things in Weyler’s camps are bad.”

I can’t bring myself to tell him the truth. I can’t bring myself to worry him. If this time together is all we have, I don’t want to spend it dwelling on our troubles.

“We’re fine. I promise. We’ll all be together soon.”

“I wish I could see Isabella.” He swallows. “Does she ask about me?”

For a moment, I picture sneaking him into the camp, letting him see his daughter, even as it’s a dangerous impossibility. Still, the force of the image of the two of them together rocks me. I hate that this war has denied them the relationship I hoped they’d have.

“Every night.”

“Thank you.”

A tear trickles down his cheek. And then another.

We hold on to each other tightly, our grief consuming as I mourn all that we have lost, all that has been taken from us.

“What’s it like out there?” I ask, wanting to understand how these years have been for him, wanting to give him a moment to unburden himself, to share in this, too, as we have shared everything else between us.

“We live our life on the run. It’s harder than I imagined. More waiting around than I imagined, too. I suppose I thought we’d meet them head-on, but with their numbers—it’s more skirmishes than anything else, stealing supplies from their trains when we can, sabotaging what we can.”

“Do you think we will win?”

He’s silent for far too long. “I don’t know. It’s hard to feel like we are truly doing enough, like these encounters will make a difference. When we lost Maceo—I doubt we’ll see another like him leading us. I can only hope that this war will end soon and that we will be victorious. That all of the good men we have lost, that their deaths will mean something.” He sighs. “I can’t—I can’t stay much longer, Marina. I wish I could stay with you forever, but I must take the information I gathered back to my men. They’re depending on me.”

I nod, because I’ve learned by now that being a soldier’s wife means the war always comes first.

We dress quickly, setting our clothes to rights.

We pause at the threshold of the room, our gazes on each other.

“Promise me,” I say.

It’s a game we used to play when we were children—promise me you’ll wait for me, promise me you won’t go to the river without me, promise you’ll meet me here tomorrow, promise me . . .

“Promise you’ll be safe,” I say. “Promise me you’ll come back to me. To all of us.”

“I promise,” he replies, even as we both know it just might be the one promise he’s ever made me that he can’t keep.

“I love you,” he tells me.

I reach out and press my palm against his cheek, reveling in the feel of him for one more moment before he’s gone again.

“I love you, too,” I reply.

Mateo leaves the room first, saying good-bye with a quick kiss, leaving me to wait a few minutes to clean myself up and make my own careful exit.

For a moment I close my eyes, tears threatening, the urge to fall to my knees and sob, to rail against this war, overwhelming. Instead, I take a deep breath and square my shoulders.

If anything, this moment with Mateo has filled me with resolve. I will do anything and everything I can to end this war.

I need to formulate a plan to get a message to Evangelina.





Seventeen





Evangelina


Time creeps by slowly now that I am cut off from my American friends. There are no more hugs from Mrs. Lee, no more promises that I will be freed, no more hope to be had. The world has forgotten me, and perhaps that’s what the Spanish wished for all along. The American papers have likely moved on to other stories. Thanks to General Weyler, there are plenty of atrocities for them to report on. I am merely one woman wronged, one human tragedy, in an endless string of them.

On the days when I’m not working in Recogidas, scrubbing floors and doing the other chores they assign us, I write letters for the women who cannot write themselves. There’s comfort to be had in their friendship. We all have more in common than I ever imagined regardless of why we’ve ended up here.

We’re all just trying to survive.

One day, a new woman sits across from me.

“I have heard you are willing to pen letters to family members for those of us who cannot write,” she says.

“I am.”

She carries herself as though someone has drilled into her the importance of maintaining proper posture, her back ramrod straight, her head tilted in such a manner that I can almost envision an elegant hat angled atop her mass of dark brown hair despite the rags she wears. Her hands tell a different tale, however, her skin red and calloused much as mine is now.

She looks like a lady who has fallen on hard times. Perhaps she is a political prisoner or the wife of a Cuban revolutionary officer.