The Hacienda(73)

Maybe He could turn that attention on the house and lend a hand, for once. That I would not mind.

“You said you saw things,” Andrés began, his voice rougher than usual—by a night of praying, by sleeplessness, or both?

I nodded.

“How distinct?”

“Like she was there.” My voice came out hoarse, cracking over the words. I cleared my throat. “She sat next to you at dinner.”

He shuddered. The grimness in his face deepened. “Not good.”

“Do you think Rodolfo killed her?”

“Beatriz.” There was a measure of surprise in his voice, of chastisement.

“Things changed, when he returned. Couldn’t you feel it?” The line of his mouth told me he did. “And the writing on the wall . . . Andrés, when did she die? Was he here?”

He searched my face. Looking for madness, no doubt. I did not blame him. Something in the house had slipped under my skin before I could stop it, and it had been growing, spreading, festering ever since. I could not know if I would ever be rid of it.

You’ll die here, like the rest of us.

“I couldn’t say,” Andrés said at last. “You would have to ask Paloma. There was a period . . . when I was not welcome here.”

His banishment. Part of me had assumed it was Rodolfo’s doing, but Rodolfo had no problem with inviting the priest to dinner, nor having him on the property. They were not warm with each other, certainly, but there was no open enmity between them either.

Something in Andrés’s face warned me from pressing that point further. I would have to ask Paloma about that.

“Maybe we could learn from him whether he did it or not,” I said. “You could sneak into the confessional in town as you did with me, but actually hear his confession, and—”

“Do?a Beatriz.”

His scandalized tone made heat rush to my cheeks. “It’s a good idea,” I challenged.

“It is flawed for a number of reasons, the least of which being I will not break the vow of the confessional.”

The quiet fervor with which he spoke stung me. “But you would only tell me. To warn me. To protect me.”

“No.” He shook his head.

“Even if he told you he murdered his wife?”

He raised clasped hands and, pressing his fingers to his lips, gave me a measured look. “That is a complicated ethical question.”

“But what if he means to hurt me?”

“That is what I am afraid of.”

The dark sobriety of his words sent a chill through me, into my gut. “How then would speaking to protect me pose a complicated ethical question? Do you want me to end up a skeleton in a wall?”

He closed his eyes. I could almost hear him saying cielo santo in his mind. “That is not fair. We do not know what happened to Do?a Catalina.”

And yet he did not revise what he had said.

I scowled, tossing one of my hands up in frustration. “I prayed for help, and what good did it do me? God has sent me the only incorruptible priest in México.”

He opened his eyes. This time, when they met mine, there was a shade of intensity in them that caught my breath and held it fast. “I would not go so far as to say that.”

A ribbon of warmth unspooled in my belly, its curiosity piqued by his words. I could not ignore it, not when heat bloomed in my cheeks, not when he sat barely a foot from me. Perhaps the yearning was forged from loneliness, from a lack of touch, but it was real all the same. It was a rope drawn taut, firmly anchored in me, and reaching to . . .

“Whatever happened to her, the fact of the matter is that she cannot move on,” Andrés said. There was a sobriety in his voice that brought reality over my shoulders, heavy as a leaden cloak.

“Do people often struggle to . . . move on?” I asked.

“No.” He lowered his hands, folding them in his lap. His eyes grew distant, lost in thought. “My grandmother had her theories about people who left behind unfinished business, who could not, for whatever reason, let go of their mortal lives. But there are also souls who are confused. Lost. Who need some guidance to find their way. Then there are the spirits who remain tied to this world by their anger.”

“Anger?” I repeated.

Andrés nodded. “It holds a great deal of energy.”

“Why is she so angry?” I wondered aloud.

Andrés’s brows rose to his hairline. “Do?a Beatriz, we know someone killed her.”

“But I didn’t do it,” I cried, gesturing at myself emphatically. “So why torment me?”

A vision from the night before flashed before my eyes: the apparition of María Catalina in my dining room, her hellfire eyes fixed on the other end of the table, staring with naked adoration at my husband.

Her husband.

If I were her, if my husband had remarried and my home been invaded by his new wife . . . wouldn’t I, too, be angry?

My thoughts were interrupted by Andrés. “Because she was like that in life,” he spat. “She struck Paloma. Ana Luisa hated her. They all did, because she was cruel and liked seeing people suffer. She—”

“Paloma thinks she killed Mariana,” I said softly. “Is that true?”

Andrés froze mid-gesture. His hand hung in the air for a long moment. He did not breathe, as if time itself had stilled around him and stolen the breath from his lips. Then he swore, twice, blunt and wretched, as he covered his face with his hands. “This is my fault. It is all my fault. I made her angry. I should never have . . .” He swore a third time.