The Hacienda(42)
Should is an oddly powerful word. Shame and anger have a way of flying to it like coins to lodestone. I had achieved detachment from so many worldly things, but this clung like burrs. It was a snake that sank its fangs so deep they touched bone, spreading its venom through my marrow.
“Buenas tardes, do?a.” I reached up with my left hand and tipped my hat to her. Let her read every ounce of quiet insubordination I poured into the movement. Let her know that I could hold grudges just as long as she. “I came at the invitation of Do?a Solórzano.” The living one, I added silently. “And I’ll return in a few days at her invitation as well.”
I clicked my tongue to the mule and led it forward and off the road slightly, so as to carve a path around where Juana stood.
She told me I was imagining it. Beatriz’s voice echoed in my mind as I remembered the hollowed-out, exhausted fear evident in the slump of her posture when we spoke in the sacristy storeroom. But she told me she was afraid of the house. She and Ana Luisa both.
I believed Beatriz’s conclusion was sound. I had known Juana—if from a distance—for most of my life, and I knew her to be sharp-eyed. Attentive. If she avoided the house as much as Beatriz said, then she knew something was wrong with it.
What else did she know?
Juana’s face was shaded by a sweat-stained hat, but it was still evident that she narrowed her eyes at me as I passed.
She would not help us.
I mounted the mule and bid Juana farewell without looking back. “Buenas tardes, do?a.”
I received no reply. When I cast a glance over my shoulder, she was gone, vanished among the rows of maguey, silent as an apparition.
Was there a chance she would go to Padre Vicente about my presence here? Perhaps, but perhaps not—Padre Vicente disapproved of her way of living, how she refused to marry and rarely came to Mass. How her lack of simpering whenever she did cross paths with the priest set the man on edge. In a way, I respected how she grated on Vicente’s nerves. She did not give a damn what anyone thought of her, as dangerous as that was for a woman of her station.
But what if she mentioned my presence to Rodolfo? Would he be angry that Beatriz had disobeyed him and sought my help?
This thought sent a bone-deep chill through me.
I knew what that monster was capable of.
But it was still unclear to me what danger Rodolfo posed Beatriz. As cruel as he was to servants, he had not raised a hand against Do?a Catalina in life.
From my mind’s eye, the skeleton in the wall grinned back at me, naked and mocking in the flickering light of the candle.
Or had he?
15
BEATRIZ
I SLEPT IN FITFUL spurts the nights Andrés spent at Hacienda Ometusco, but enough that I had my wits about me when the first shipment of furniture arrived from the capital courtesy of Rodolfo. With the help of Paloma, the interim foreman José Mendoza, and a handful of young tlachiqueros wrangled away from Juana and the fields for the morning, we outfitted the house. A Nicaraguan cedar table and expensively upholstered chairs in the formal dining room. Rugs in the parlors and bedchambers. Candelabras, love seats, and empty bookcases filled rooms like uncomfortable, stiff company come to dinner.
I left the green parlor empty. The signs of normalcy settling into other parts of the house made its bare walls and long shadows an obvious bruise.
When Paloma, Mendoza, and the last of the tlachiqueros left, the house shuddered, a disgruntled bull shaking flies from its hide. I felt the cold tendrils of its attention on me less often, and with less intent than I had before the priest’s arrival: it was as if the house knew the protective marks along the threshold of my bedchamber meant Andrés would return, and in his absence, it grew preoccupied with this fact. A sullen energy built beneath its stucco, in the agitated midnight slamming of its doors.
I waited too. With no one to speak freely with about my troubles, my thoughts tangled tight in my mind and chest. Sudden movements caused me to startle; Paloma took to announcing her presence several long footsteps before she appeared in a doorway in a kind attempt to keep me from leaping to my feet, wide-eyed, my breathing shallow and sharp.
If she thought I was mad, she made no mention of it. Perhaps it was misguided hope, or a desperate yearning for company, but I was beginning to think she might believe quite the opposite. Or rather, that she approved of the steps I was taking to combat the house. While helping me gather linens from my bedchamber for laundering on the day Padre Andrés was meant to return, she took one look at the marks on the threshold and made a soft, satisfied sound. Approval, perhaps?
Later, as she was leaving the house for her siesta, she paused before stepping from the kitchen into the vegetable garden.
“I never thanked you, do?a,” Paloma said softly, speaking through the doorway rather than back to me.
I tilted my head to one side. I had come to understand Paloma’s reserve as a matter of fact; her volunteering any emotion—much less gratitude toward me—was enough to give me pause. “What do you mean?” I asked carefully.
“For bringing him back.”
And she was gone, sweeping silent through the garden like a raven.
* * *
*
WHEN THE CLOUDS GATHERED over the hills, their rain-heavy bellies streaked with dusk, Padre Andrés returned to San Isidro. I waited in the doorway to the courtyard of the main house, twisting my hands over each other. When I caught sight of him walking up the hill to the capilla, the lingering light casting a long, slim shadow through the low chaparral, my hands stilled.