Page 21 of The Hacienda
The wall was unblemished. Whole.
“No,” I breathed. “But—”
Juana and Paloma stopped as I barreled down the hall, as I ran my hands over the wall, the wall where I had taken down three bricks and nearly been crushed by the resulting tumult. The wall was cool and dry, but I could not see the outline of bricks as I had before. “No.”
I struck the wall with the heel of my left hand, biting my lip as the rough surface of stucco bit into my palm. Stucco. Not lime whitewash. This couldn’t be. I ran down the hall, trailing my hand along the wall, searching for the bricks, searching for the lime whitewash that had covered me in dust. For the love of God, the backs of my hands were still pale with it.
I stopped again right before the place where the wall had nearly crushed me. I hammered the heels of my hands against the wall in frustration.
“Doña...” Paloma interrupted.
“It was here!” I whirled on them. “The wall was open, and there was a body in there. There was a dead person. Someone covered it with bricks. It was here, I swear it washere.”
Their eyes were wide, but not with fear.
With something else.
They thought I was mad.
My heart hammered in my throat.
“It’s true,” I cried. “I leaned on the wall and it started caving. It’s true.” Tears sprang to my eyes; my throat was tight with frustration. I picked up my notes and abandoned pencil from the ground, miming how I had been writing against the wall before.
The solidness of the wall mocked me.
Juana raised a single brow.
“What is that?” she wondered, her gaze falling on my notes. She stepped forward and looked over my shoulder.
“It’s a list of things for Rodolfo,” I said. “To outfit the house and make it presentable again. Why aren’t you listening to me?”
Juana scanned the list: notes about china dealers in the capital, fresh talavera tiles from Puebla, a note to ask my mother about imported rugs.
Her face hardened. Then she turned to Paloma, her face transformed into a mask of sympathy.
“Doña Beatriz had a bit of a shock yesterday,” she said in a soft, maternal voice, as if she were explaining away the woes of a weeping child. “I think perhaps this must have been a misunderstanding.”
I stared at Juana, mortified.
“No.” The word came out strangled. “There is no misunderstanding. There is something—someone—in this wall.”
“You are dismissed, Paloma,” Juana said softly. “I will take care of this.”
Paloma’s eyes skipped to me. I couldn’t read her expression; if I had had longer to parse it, if I had known her better, perhaps I could have, but she turned and left. Her footsteps echoed down the hall.
Juana took me by the upper arm. “Let’s go.”
I dug in my heels. “You oughtn’t humiliate me in front of the servants,” I snapped, perhaps more harshly than I should have. Not only was I shaken, embarrassment burned in my cheeks as I faced Juana. “You heard Rodolfo. My word ishiswhen he’s gone. They won’t respect me if you treat me like this.”
Perhaps that was what she intended all along. But she gave no indication if this was the case; her face did not shift from its mask of sympathy. She clucked.
“Did you not sleep well last night?” she wondered sweetly. “Perhaps you dreamed it. I used to have terrible nightmares as a child.”
A wave of hatred filled my chest. How dare she? I shrugged violently, trying to release my arm from her hold. Her grip tightened.
“Let me go, Juana.”
“Why don’t you come—”
