The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba(51)

The shadow of a man.

I blink to assure myself that I am not dreaming, but when I open my eyes once more, he is still there, walking toward me along the roof.

Karl Decker.

We only met once, but he introduced himself before the guards cut off contact between me and my friends.

Karl crosses the distance between us quickly and puts his hand through the bars, taking mine. In a sliver of moonlight, I spy a bearded man behind him, and another man behind them.

I can’t contain the little cry that escapes my lips at the sight of them.

“Don’t be afraid. We’ll have you out of here soon,” Karl whispers, squeezing my hand in his.

I want to speak, to thank him for coming for me, but there are no words, so I release him and watch as he pulls out a saw and sets upon the bars, his friends joining him.

It’s louder than I imagined it would be when I first devised the plan, the sound of metal clashing enough to wake the dead. The acid I suggested would have been much faster and more efficient. I don’t know why they didn’t bring it, but without it, the saw’s work is unbearably slow even with both of them working as hard as possible.

For an hour, loud noises fill the room as the two men attack the bars. If they continue like this much longer, there’s no doubt someone will wake up. It’s a miracle no one has heard them so far.

I pivot from the window and walk over to my cot, grabbing a sheet and wrapping it around my body to cover myself so that if any of the other women do wake, they won’t wonder why I am dressed in my daytime clothes rather than my nightgown.

As I am about to return to the window to check my rescuers’ progress, a cough sounds behind me.

I whirl around just as Rosa rises from her bed, alert once more.

“My head hurts,” she complains.

This is it. I open my mouth to speak to her, but no sound escapes. If she spots the men behind me, if she yells for the guards—

But even as I anticipate her cry of alarm, I am greeted by silence.

Blessedly, the sawing has stopped behind me, the dormitory quiet. I yearn to look and see if my rescuers are still at the window waiting for me, but I can’t take my gaze off Rosa.

One shout from her is enough to bring the guards running.

“Who is at the window?” she asks.

“N-No one,” I sputter. “I am feeling poorly and came to the window for air.”

Rosa stares at me for a beat, and I can’t tell if she believes me or not. There are moments when it feels as though she is here with us, and others when she is somewhere else entirely, an altogether different sort of prison.

She doesn’t respond, but she lies back on her side, curling her body as though leaving space for another to fit inside the curve.

The low hum of a familiar nursery rhyme my older sisters once sang to me fills the room as she sings to the baby she lost as she so often does.

Tears prick my eyes.

I approach the window once more to tell the men it’s too risky tonight, that the laudanum clearly hasn’t done its job sufficiently. If I’m caught trying to escape, they’ll kill me.

I return to the window, but it’s clear that the men have already figured the same thing out for themselves, because their tools are gone, the bars intact, my hope of escape this evening shattered.

Karl hovers on the side of the building.

“Promise me you’ll return tomorrow night,” I whisper, tears threatening. “Please. Promise me. I cannot spend another night in this place, I cannot—”

“We’ll be back. I promise.” Karl reaches through the bars and squeezes my hand again before he pulls away, leaving me to stare after his retreating back as the men return to the house across the street.

There’s nothing to do but lie down in my bed like the others, even though I doubt sleep will come with the nerves and fear rattling around inside me. To have freedom so close I can taste it and then yanked from me so quickly feels like a cruel thing indeed.

But despite the events of the evening, my eyes eventually close, my body sinking into sleep.

When I dream, I am back home, in the house with the courtyard and the dancing fountain, and in the precious hours when I am asleep, I am free.



* * *



—

The next day begins as ordinarily as all the ones before it, and as much as I worry Rosa will speak of the unusual goings-on last night, she keeps to herself, occasionally cradling her imaginary baby and crooning to it, her thoughts on the past and not on me.

I watch her carefully, waiting to see if there is a moment when she will give me away, and then finally, I ask the question I never thought to ask before.

“Your baby? What is its name?”

Rosa stares through me, and just when I think she isn’t going to answer me, she replies—

“Her name was Maria.”

She walks past me before I can say another word.

Did she lose her daughter before she came here? Or is her body buried somewhere in this place?

How could you move past a thing such as that?

As the day wears on, I do everything I can to keep from arousing suspicion, guilt over drugging my cellmates with laudanum again plaguing me.

Later in the day, I go to make the coffee, the laudanum clutched in my hand, my back to the other women.

Behind me someone calls out—

“I’ve been feeling terribly all day. Perhaps Evangelina used some of that famous beauty and bewitched the coffee.”