The Hacienda(79)

It was a cursed place.

It could never be home.

Not for her. Not for me.

“I want to leave,” I whispered, head in my hands. “I want to leave and never come back.”

Paloma resumed rubbing my back. “Where would you go?”

“I have nowhere.” The realization cracked my chest open like a tlachiquero’s machete opening the heart of maguey. A single, true strike, severing off a part of me that I hadn’t known was there. A hope that somehow, I could convince Mamá that all would be well in the end.

“Are you sure your family won’t have you?” Paloma asked softly.

I shook my head. Mamá wouldn’t even receive my letters, much less me.

Perhaps she interpreted it as no, I wasn’t sure, for she kept speaking. Her words held a comforting weight. Perhaps the soothing, magnetic quality of Andrés’s voice was not the trace of a witch’s power, but rather a mark of their family.

“Family is all we have when things fall apart,” she said. “I am glad Andrés is here. You know . . . he was gone for so long.” A moment passed, heavy with words unspoken. I sniffed pitifully and wiped my nose with her kerchief. “It was a good thing that you brought him back to us. We need him.”

“I know,” I said. The words came out nasal from the tears.

“His return earned you much respect among the pueblo,” Paloma added. “That is not something easily won. We have had little love for the Solórzanos, least of all the wives they bring from the capital. Especially not when the last one banished Andrés.”

“What happened, that he was banished?” I asked, grateful for something to focus on. Anything but the idea of Mamá turning away letter after letter from me.

Paloma looked out at the garden. The mist had lifted, but the day was gray, and in its light the flower beds looked especially lifeless and forsaken.

Though she was a servant and I the patrón’s wife, that did not mean I was any more entitled to what she knew than she was to my own troubles. Any other time, I would have backed away. Respected the sorrow that so clearly hung around her like a shroud.

But a deep intuition, or perhaps dread, or perhaps even fear told me I had to know.

“What happened?”

She inhaled deeply through her nose, and her dam burst:

“I told you I heard rumors that the patrón raped someone who worked in the house. That was a lie. Mariana told me it happened, then later, she told me she was with child. She was frightened. I asked Andrés for help. Titi . . . I mean, our grandmother, had many cures, and I knew she had taught him the one to end pregnancies. He had just returned from Guadalajara. I think he brushed up against the Inquisition there—he was afraid. But I pushed him to do it. Do?a Catalina saw him bring me the cure. She threatened him. Cast him out. And then she turned on me.” She barely drew breath, she was speaking so quickly. “We watch each other’s backs. That’s how we survive. But I—” Her breathing hitched; tears made her eyes glassy, reflecting the gray light of the morning. “She was cruel. She told me she would not tolerate bastards and kept beating me until I told her who the cure was for. Mariana wouldn’t have. Mariana was stronger than me. But I gave in, and a week later, Mariana was dead. Do?a Catalina ordered her to take candelabras up to that ledge in the formal dining room, even though we never had guests and no one used that room. Only Do?a Catalina was there when Mariana fell . . .” Her voice cracked. “Do?a Catalina killed her, I’m sure of it, and it’s all my fault.”

Sobs seized her. She leaned into me; I slid an arm over her shoulders and held her tight. The clouds did not part, but the sky was lightening. I tilted my face up to it. I wanted to spirit us away, lift her and take her with me somewhere, anywhere but here.

But there was nowhere to go. Nowhere to seek refuge. Nowhere to find peace.

Slowly, Paloma caught her breath. She sniffed. “That bitch got what she deserved,” she whispered.

I stiffened. “I thought she died of typhus,” I said slowly, my voice sounding distant as it echoed the words that Tía Fernanda had once stage-whispered maliciously behind my back.

Paloma lifted her head. “Who buries someone who died of typhus in a wall?” she cried.

Juana, Juana . . .

From the crumbling wall in the north wing, the skull grinned out at me, mocking me with its too-wide smile and crooked, broken neck. I thought of Juana mocking me for thinking someone was buried in the wall, releasing me so I fell back into the cold dark of the north wing.

As you wish, Do?a Beatriz. Your word is the patrón’s.

Juana hated me because I threatened her authority. I was her brother’s wife, a check on her power in the kingdom of San Isidro. She must have hated María Catalina because she, too, was a symbol of Rodolfo, how Juana’s life of privilege and freedom was nothing but a lie. That it could all be taken away in a moment.

For Juana was a bastard.

Rodolfo kept this secret. Out of misplaced loyalty to her or his own pride, he had never told a soul. Not even me. And when he threatened to treat her as he believed she deserved, when he threatened to disown her . . .

It wasn’t the house that killed Rodolfo. Not like Ana Luisa, no. He never felt the cold, he saw no apparitions nor heard dissonant laughter, because the house—María Catalina—liked Rodolfo.