33: Beatriz

33

BEATRIZ

THOUGH THE SUN SHONE bright in an azure sky, I wore a thick wool shawl over my shoulders as Andrés escorted me to the house. He had succeeded in healing it several days ago; it was safe enough that Paloma had salvaged some of my clothing from the wreckage of the fire. The dining room was damaged, for it was beneath my study, she said, but otherwise the majority of the house remained unscathed. My belongings were not so lucky. Smoke had damaged much of what had not burned, but I didn’t care.

The next morning, I was leaving. I was taking Mamá up on her invitation and going to Cuernavaca for a long, long time. Perhaps forever.

Part of me was wary—was Cuernavaca truly the solution to my longing for a home? I had thought as much of San Isidro.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be.

But I knew that returning to Mamá was.

Birdsong lilted overhead as we entered the courtyard and walked toward the house. Swallows swooped toward the pockmarked tiles of the roof; nests had emerged in the hollows beneath tiles.

I stopped before the door, my heart hammering.

Andrés took the steps leading up to the door two at a time and reached for the handle before he noticed my reticence or the color draining from my face. I would not be surprised if he could hear the panicked thundering of my heart against my rib cage.

“It’s all right,” he said softly. “She’s gone. The house is back to its old self.”

The house looked the same, but I could sense—somehow I could, somehow I could feel it, through my feet on the ground, through the taste of the air—that he spoke the truth. The energy of the house had softened. Whatever attention it had turned inward, on itself. I was not its focus. I was no longer a mouse walking into the jaws of a cat.

Andrés backtracked down the steps. He held out a hand. “It’s completely inhabitable now. It’s safe.”

For a moment, I wavered, considering his upturned palm. Perhaps I could step inside, if only to see for myself that he was right. That he had healed it.

Alcohol catching flame blazed through my mind. The flash of the machete. The certainty of heat, the inevitability of catching flame . . .

“No.” My throat tightened. I could still taste acrid smoke, hear Juana’s cry as she fell, hear the wet snap of bone. No, I could not go in. Not now. “It’s too much.”

“Beatriz.” His hand was still outstretched, his voice soft. “I spent the night here, without copal, to make sure of it. It’s very peaceful.”

I considered him warily. Why was he so eager to show me? Why did he feel the need to prove he was right? Didn’t he understand?

When I met his eyes, the answer opened before me, bright as the toll of the capilla bell.

Because he wants you to stay.

But I couldn’t.

I had once called the house before us mine. I came to its threshold with the confidence of a conqueror, of a general, ready to put down its rebellions and bend it to my will. I was wrong to. San Isidro could never have been mine. Never would be. It had never been Juana’s. Nor Rodolfo’s, nor any other Solórzano’s.

If it belonged to anyone, it was to the people who lived here, like Paloma and Ana Luisa and Mendoza. To Andrés. Or perhaps it belonged to no one, and would forever remain a willful, ancient domain unto itself. A pale stucco giant slumbering in this valley, its high walls looming, forever watchful, over the fields of maguey.

For me, it would remain a place of painful memories, lingering fear woven thick over the place like a shroud. I knew that if I stayed, I would suffocate beneath its weight.

“I can’t stay,” I breathed. “I’m leaving.”

Andrés lowered his hand. “Cuernavaca.”

“You must understand,” I said. “This house, the money. None of it matters unless I have Mamá. She apologized, in her letters, and I . . .” I trailed off, my voice wavering precipitously close to breaking. “I have to go to her.”

The lines of his face settled; his breathing shifted. “I know.”

We went for a long walk, my last survey of the property before leaving the next day. We crested the hill overlooking the neat rows of maguey and stopped to catch our breath. Or for me to catch my breath, rather—like the first time I had seen him walk up the hill to San Isidro, Andrés was infuriatingly at ease, as if he had expended no more energy than crossing a parlor on his long legs.

The wind had changed, and clouds thickened the blue sky. I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I traced the sweep of the valley before us, into the dark rolling hills of the mountains far away. A breeze swept through high golden grasses, a bite of winter on its breath. Far away, a boy whistled to his dog as they followed a herd of cloud-white sheep trotting across the valley floor.

“Will you ever come back?”

I turned to Andrés. His hands hung loose at his sides. I had noticed the backs of his hands were roped with strange new scars. I had not yet asked him about them, and I would not now.

He looked down at me with an expression I knew immediately was a mask, for it showed a calm too carefully composed to be natural.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “Say what you mean to say.”

A long moment passed where only the wind spoke. It lifted and whispered through the grasses, passing the quiet gossip of the valley to the hilltop.

I turned my face away from him, toward the shepherd and his flock far away. I had misspoken. I should have never agreed to be alone with him, not like this, not when I was raw. Not when my ribs ached with a sweetness that was not from mortal wounds.

The soft touch of fingertips at my wrist.

I looked up as he took my hand loosely in his. My breath caught as he lifted it to his mouth and pressed my knuckles to his lips.

Now his face laid his emotions bare: brows drawn together, a mournful earnestness in his hazel eyes that made my heart trip over itself.

Don’t go, that look said.

My pulse pounded in my ears. The breeze that rose stung my cheeks; they burned with a flush as we stood, locked in each other’s gaze for many heartbeats, still as figures in a painting.

He did not speak.

How could he? There was too much to say. The road we stood on led to nowhere but parting.

Somewhere over the mountains, a soft roll of thunder sounded.

Andrés cast a look up at the sky, soft annoyance crossing his features. As if he were displeased with the heavens for interrupting.

“Is it going to rain?” I whispered.

He still held my hand to his lips. I could almost feel his indecision against my skin. Of course it was going to rain. It always did, this time of year. But rain meant turning back, and turning back meant . . .

“I don’t think so.” His breath brushed against my knuckles, sending a shiver over my skin.

The wind tugged at my skirts. One cold drop, then another, struck my cheeks.

“Liar,” I said, and pulled my hand toward me. He released it, though his expression remained unchanged.

I turned away. I couldn’t bear to see it. Better to bid goodbye and get it over with than linger with him here. Better not to think about how perhaps, he was as lonely as I was. How perhaps he felt the tautness between us as I did, as a living, breathing thing. A creature of featherlight longing that bound us, though it rippled fragile as mist at sunrise. Perhaps he was afraid that my leaving meant losing it forever.

It would.

And that was the way it should be.

I repeated this over and over to myself, setting one foot in front of the other. I walked ahead of Andrés so I would not have to look at him and filled myself with stern determination. This was the way it must be. Loneliness had been a part of my life before, and perhaps it would be again—it was not something that would kill us.

But oh, the weight that had lifted from my shoulders when I slept next to him in the capilla. When we sat shoulder to shoulder, facing the darkness together. The rush of knowing one was not alone was a heady thing, thicker than mezcal in the way it made my head spin.

We were still a half kilometer from the village when the clouds broke open. The rains in the valley never began shyly: it was as if the skies had made a trip to the well and dumped bucket after bucket into the valley with cackling abandon.

At first I made to outrun it, pulling my shawl over my head in a vain attempt to keep dry, then I pulled up short. I was breathing too hard; my wound hurt faintly. Andrés was at my side then, and I laughed up at him as I opened my arms to the skies.

“I surrender,” I called to the clouds. “You win.”

We reached the capilla before the village. By then, the rain was coming down in sheets so thick the ground was slick with mud and the stucco walls of the chapel gray in my vision.

“Come inside,” Andrés said, raising his voice to be heard over the tumult. I followed him to his rooms off the chapel. He struck his head in the low doorway for the umpteenth time; he cursed colorfully. I broke into breathless laughter as I followed, shaking from the cold and from running through the rain.

He shut the door behind me. His hair was slicked dark across his forehead, his outer coat completely soaked. I lifted my shawl and held it out before me. It poured water onto the floor.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasped between peals of laughter. “I didn’t mean to—”

I broke off, laughter dying on my lips. He had taken a step closer to me. My pulse pounded in my throat as he tucked a curl behind my ear and, ever so delicately, took my face in his hands. My cheeks burned; the brush of his thumbs was cool relief.

He met my eyes and saw all the answer he needed there.

He kissed me.

There was no hesitation. No shyness. Only need.

I dropped the shawl. I leaned into him and kissed him back, winding my arms around him. Holding his warmth close. Fleetingly, I thought of how Rodolfo was the only person I had ever kissed, and how this was nothing like that. Time was lost to me—here, there was no calculating, no wandering thoughts. I was here, breathlessly here, and seized with a dizziness that left me clinging to Andrés as if he alone could keep me on my feet. As if there were nothing in the world but Andrés, the smell of rain on his skin, his lips on the sensitive skin of my throat, his hands traveling down my back and pressing me to him with a strength I did not know he had.

I dug my fingers into his back. Hard.

A small gasp against my neck. “Beatriz.” Then his mouth was on mine again, hard, with a deep and searing need.

I knew then I would not look back. I would not look forward.

There was only now, there was only stripping soaked clothes from burning skin and the labored creak of his cot as he sat on it and drew me roughly into his lap. There was only now, the skin of his chest against mine, running my fingers through his damp hair as he kissed my neck and breasts, holding me so tightly to him I could barely breathe.

He loosed a small groan as I rocked against him. “Don’t leave.” There was a note of helplessness in it, a plea, a prayer.

“Come with me,” I said into his hair. “To Cuernavaca. Leave all this behind.”

He lifted his head and looked up at me.

All this.

For the briefest second, his eyes skipped past me, to where I knew a cross hung on the wall. A flicker of apprehension across his face; a soft lilt of panic in his voice as he forced his attention back to me. “I can’t think about that now. I can’t.”

“Shh.” I cupped his face in my hands, running my thumbs over his cheeks. I wanted to memorize the feeling of his stubble against my palms, the shape of his lips as they parted. His dark eyelashes, framing eyes that looked up at me with utter trust. With a longing so open and deep it sent an ache through my chest.

No looking back. No looking forward.

“Then don’t.” I lowered my face to his. “Just be with me now,” I breathed against his lips. “Be.”