Page 73 of The Hacienda
“You beast,” Juana spat, cutting him off. “Let me go.” Rodolfo ignored them both and dragged Juana out of the parlor, kicking the door shut behind him.
It bounced off the doorway, swinging open an inch or two into the hall.
“I am at the end of my rope.” Rodolfo’s voice carried easily into the parlor.
“So hang yourself with it,” Juana spat.
“It will be a miracle if they do not immediately tell the whole district Juana Solórzano is a drunk and a whore.” Rodolfo raised his voice to speak over her. “A miracle if I marry you off and get you the hell out of my house.”
“Father said the house was—”
The smack of palm on cheek. I jumped; Andrés and I locked gazes, eyes wide in horror.
“Do not ever dare to call him that in my presence again,” Rodolfo roared. “You and I both know he is no father of yours, and I will no longer tolerate your lying bastard tongue. You will change your behavior and act as befits the station we pretend you deserve, or so help me God, I will throw you out and make sure you inherit nothing of his honest work.Get out of my sight.”
Juana’s boots struck the flagstones, sharp, determined, leading to the front door. She slammed it shut behind her.
Surprise brought a tinge of color to Andrés’s wan face. If what Rodolfo said was true—that Juana was a bastard, that she and Rodolfo did not share the same father—it was as much a surprise to him as it was to me.
The sound of Rodolfo’s shoes striking the flagstones drew near; hastily, Andrés and I both sat in the chairs closest to us. I seized some needlework. Andrés opened the Bible and began reading in the middle of a sentence. I focused on rethreading the needle as Rodolfo entered.
I lifted my head, keeping an innocent look pasted on my face. Rodolfo seemed as calm as if he had been strolling through the garden with his sister, not shouting obscenities at her and threatening to throw her out of the house. The dying fire cast him in a soft, reddish glow; the only signs he had been angry were the twitch of a muscle in his jaw and a single lock of hair falling into his face. This he brushed aside in a smooth, controlled movement.
He was Janus-faced, my husband. A creature of rage and violence on one side, a serene, gilded prince on the other. He was a staunch defender of the Republic and casta abolitionist who raped women who worked on his property.
I could not trust him. Either side of him.
I could not anger him either. Too many women had died in this house for me to test his patience.
There was nothing I could do as Andrés, my only protection, stood and bid good night to Rodolfo.
“Yes, I think it best we retire,” Rodolfo agreed, turning to him. “I have had a long day of travel.”
I rose, shooting Andrés a look from behind my husband’s back.
Don’t leave, I longed to cry out. I was sure he could read it on my face, in the desperate glint of my eyes in the firelight, as he nodded farewell to me.
No.But there was no reason for him to stay.
“Buenas noches, doña.” A turn of the shoulder, and he departed.
My last defense gone.
From somewhere in the hall, a trill of dissonant laughter echoed. How long the night before me stretched, a black maw without beginning or end. I now stood alone in the parlor with Rodolfo, surrounded by walls that had once borne his name in fresh blood. Walls that still hummed with thick hatred for my presence, that watched my every move.
Over the course of my time at San Isidro, I had learned the different tastes of my fear: the sickening awareness that I was being watched. The dread of the sentient cold sweeping through the house, the spears of terror at a flash of red eyes in the dark.
The fear that rooted my feet to the floor as I stared at Rodolfo’s back was different. It was new.
I now knew what it tasted like to be trulytrapped.
22
RODOLFO STARED INTO THEfire. His hands were clasped behind his back, and he worked a golden signet ring on his left hand with the right, lost in thought.
I sat, my needlework limp in my hands. There was no more use in pretending I had been counting stitches, that my attention was occupied by anything but awareness of Andrés’s presence passing through the gates of the courtyard. The moment he did, the weight of the darkness shifted. It twitched, first here, then there, as if shaking off an irritating fly, and refocused on the only two people left in the house.
It coiled around us, darkness thickening with each passing moment. A chill crept under the closed door and drew near, slinking across the floor with the sinuous determination of a centipede. Closer, closer, snaking around my ankles.
