The Hacienda(89)

The house shuddered around us. Unable to throw my arms out for balance, I fell. My shoulder ground into shattered glass; my head swam with smoke. I squinted up at the ceiling; it was alive with embers.

It was going to collapse on us.

This was the end. I had fought and I had failed. Would Papá be waiting for me, on the other side of agony?

Slam.

Damn those doors, I thought, coughing. My vision darkened. The shadows were moving. The shadows looked like someone’s legs cutting through the flames . . .

“Beatriz!”

Andrés. He was here. Hands—his hands—hauled me to my aching feet. My awareness spun with smoke and heat as he lifted me into his arms.

A sickening crunch carved through the heat overhead. Tiles cracked as they struck one another. Beams groaned and snapped.

The roof fell.

“Carajo.”

Andrés ducked his head and bolted forward. Rather than trying to stop us or smother us, the attention of the house—of María Catalina—pulled away from us. It blazed down on Juana, on the inferno, and let us pass unassailed.

An explosion of sparks and heat; but it was behind me, it was behind us now. Cold air washed over my face. Andrés was taking the stairs two at a time, leaning against the banister for balance as he used our weight to sprint for the door.

Whispers I had never heard before swept around us from the walls of the house. Cobweb soft, they drew us forward, supporting us down the stairs, across the flagstones. To the front door.

It flew open of its own accord.

Andrés stumbled down the steps into the courtyard. Curtains of dark rain poured over us as he fell to his knees, his arms tight around me, holding me to his chest like a child. I realized, distantly, that he was speaking to me, that his breath hitched as if he were weeping, but everything around me faded to darkness.

To silence.





31





DARKNESS GRAYED; THERE WERE voices over me, light and deep. Andrés’s voice was among them, its soft rasp cutting through the thick haze hanging over my mind. “Paloma, will you write down what he said?”

“Shh, she’s waking,” Paloma’s voice said.

I opened my eyes.

Wooden beams hung low overhead. A wool blanket rested over my lower body and legs; cool air brushed over my stomach. A man with white whiskers who looked vaguely like Padre Guillermo examined my side. A touch of something warm that stung; I gasped, from surprise more than pain.

“Gentle, doctor.” Andrés’s voice carried a dark warning.

“Padre, for the last time. Keep your peace or leave.” The old man hovering over me harrumphed, but not unkindly. “Meddling know-it-all,” he added under his breath as he dabbed more poultice on the wound across my ribs.

I turned my head to the side. Paloma sat next to me, biting her lip as she scribbled furiously on a piece of paper—instructions from the doctor.

Andrés stood before the hearth, staring into the fire. His hands were bandaged in thick white strips, clasped as if in prayer with his fingertips pressed to his lips. Was he all right? What had happened?

Did Juana survive?

Andrés glanced over his shoulder, as if he heard my building distress, and met my gaze.

Rest. He did not speak, but I heard him as clearly as if he had. Whatever had happened, it was over. I could sleep.

I let myself melt away into soft, gray unconsciousness.



* * *




*

WHEN I WOKE SOMETIME later, it was to the sound of someone chopping vegetables.

Sunlight streamed over the blankets covering me. I turned my head to the side. There was a chair next to the cot I lay on. It was empty but for a stack of letters. Beyond was an open door; Paloma was outside, working in what looked like an open-air kitchen. The smell of frying onions brought me fully awake. I was famished.

I tossed off the blankets, wincing as I sat upright and brought my feet to the floor. The bandages around my torso were white and fresh, and the pain along my ribs had lessened to a dull throb.

I glanced at the chair. A single letter lay open atop a handful of envelopes; it was signed by the hand of Victoriano Román and absolved me of Rodolfo’s murder. I lifted it; my breath caught.

The envelopes. They were addressed to Do?a Beatriz Solórzano, of course, but in Mamá’s handwriting.

I didn’t notice the pain in my side as I reached for them. There were six, perhaps eight. My vision blurred as I tore the first open.

Mamá was back in Cuernavaca. The matriarch of Papá’s extended family had died and left Mamá the little stone house in the garden where I had grown up. I saw her clearly as I read, as if I were in the room myself: Mamá sitting in its small kitchen, writing to me, surrounded by vases of flowers, the smell of her perfume mixing with chocolate warming on the stove. Her soil-stained gardening apron hanging on its hook on the door. Morning light curling into the room through the thick vines that hung rebelliously over the window.

Mamá invited me to visit, Mamá wanted to make amends, Mamá wanted . . . she wanted me. It was evident from Mamá’s letters that she was concerned by the lack of reply, but that she understood my stubbornness, and prayed I would forgive her.

Later, after I had read them all and forced myself to stop sobbing for the pain it caused in my side, I limped to the doorway.