Page 81 of The Hacienda
“Beatriz.” That was Andrés, his warm hand on my shoulder.
The night before flooded me: fleeing the house, racing through the rain to the capilla. How Andrés found me here and stayed with me through the night.
The Andrés who stood over me now was not the one I had embraced last night, whose black hair was messy from sleep, whose ragged nightshirt I had soaked with my tears. He was dressed in his austere black habit, and was freshly shaven, his hair slicked away from his face. He smelled of a piney local soap and, faintly, of copal.
I tightened the blanket around me. I was now—in a way I hadn’t been last night—acutely aware of how little I wore. I hadn’t cared in the middle of the night. Safety was what mattered then. Nothing else had crossed my mind.
Almost nothing else. Looking up at Andrés now—PadreAndrés, I emphasized to myself—should fill me with a sense of shame. I should not admire the dark line of his lashes or the placement of the small mole on his cheek. I should remember last night more innocently, not lingering on the warmth of his body, nor the weight of his hands on me. I hadn’t cared then. But as the daylight strengthened, so would my shame.
I didn’t want it to.
I wanted to stay in the capilla forever, abandoned in sleep, not a shred of guilt to be found within me.
I didnotwant to go back to the house. Which was precisely what Andrés had woken me to do.
Seeing I was awake, he sat next to me on the pew and offered me a cup of water. I snuck a glance at his face over the rim as I drank deeply.
He was staring into space, or perhaps up at the crucifix. His mouth was firm, and the lines forming around it seemed deeper than ever. There was no peace to be found there.
I lowered the cup and followed the line of his eye up to the crucifix. The carver and painter had fixed Jesus Christ’s gaze upward in agonized rapture, but a small, curling feeling of shame told me His attention was focused on the more earthly affairs before Him. I set the cup down and tightened the blanket around my shoulders.
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—”
“Doña 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.”
