Page 92 of The Hacienda
Juana was a monster. A gilded monster with my keys on her hip, looking beatifically at me as the caudillo’s men turned to leave the room.
I held her gaze until the door shut, picturing her covered in red, Rodolfo’s blood dripping down her face, splattering her clothes. I wanted to scream.
Slam.
I flinched. The tongue of the lock slid shut. A jangle of keys; the sound of footsteps descending the staircase.
I was alone.
A plate of cold tortillas was left on a table. My stomach growled. Whatif they were poisoned? I wouldn’t put it beyond Juana to do so. I glared at the food. Even if it weren’t, I couldn’t stomach the thought of food so near to where Rodolfo had died. Not when the smell of blood still hung in the air, drifting in from the next room.
I crossed to the far side of the study, away from the door to the bedchamber. The rug was damp beneath my bare feet. It hadn’t been earlier this morning. I was barefoot then too—I would have noticed.
I squinted up to the ceiling. Was there a leak? If there was, it was significant: the rug was soaked, the floor on this side of the room was dark and slick with...
I inhaled, and my nose crinkled at the strength of the smell.Alcohol.It reminded me of the night Juana and I drank mezcal, when I woke with a sour headache and knowledge that something was wrong in the house.
How long ago that seemed.
I frowned. Rodolfo had not drunk mezcal, as far as I knew—though, then again, I did not know.
And I never would.
He was gone.
It was a strange realization. It had not struck me that morning, when I found him, nor at any point during the day thus far. Judging from the color of the light coming in from the western-facing windows, it was late afternoon. Hours had passed. And still—
Rodolfo was dead.
I had cared for him, when we met. I was hungry for him and all he stood for. That hunger soured to fear and disgust in the last weeks, as I learned of his cruelty and his hypocrisy. But he was dead. As dead as my dream for a home.
Now what awaited me? Prison? An asylum? Execution, for my supposed crime? My heartbeat quickened at the thought. The vapor of the spilled alcohol was making me dizzy, but at least it masked the smell of Rodolfo’s death.
His chest lifting; his head turning. The jerk of his lips and the sharp movements of his glassy eyes... these were imprinted in my mind, burned there in a way more powerful than any nightmare. Andrés and the caudillo and José Mendoza staring at me, completely unable to see or hear.
Tell him the truth, that strangled voice said.
The truth was Juana killed him. Juana killed anyone who stood in her path. And she had won. With her crocodile tears and authority as an hacendado’s daughter, she had won. She told the men I was mad.
The truth was Iwasmad.
Andrés had come too late. The house cracked my mind open and shattered it like china before I even knew of his existence, before I knew a witch could purge the house of evil intent.
Cast it out.
I could not, not now. Perhaps I never could have. I was vulnerable and ripe, and doomed from the first night I saw red in the dark. The house knew me as prey the moment I crossed its threshold, and now, it would devour me.
Lifting my eyes, I saw my father’s map on the wall. I had pinned it above my desk weeks ago, the day Rodolfo left for the capital. I was so occupied with the north wing and the green parlor that I had not thought about this room much at all, not since the day I discovered my silks covered with blood. That was the only point at which Juana and I had spent any time together.
Apparently, it was enough to convince her I was to be gotten rid of.
My eyes stung with tears. What had I done wrong? Nothing. What could I have done right? Nothing. I married Rodolfo and presumably would bear heirs to inherit this property away from Juana. Perhaps I was not even a flesh-and-blood person to her: I was but a symbol of her brother taking away what she wanted, what she believed to be hers.
Hadn’t I longed for the same? Wasn’t that what an hacienda represented? Rodolfo’s money was liberation from Tía Fernanda’s reign of humiliation. Deliverance from desperate reliance on the fickle kindness ofrelatives I barely knew. I had sacrificed any hope of love in my marriage to secure my autonomy.
Juana sacrificed María Catalina. She sacrificed her brother. I had no doubt she would spill my blood, too, if she saw it beneficial to her.
I had to fight back.
