Page 106 of The Hacienda
There was no hesitation. No shyness. Onlyneed.
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 wasnothinglike that. Time was lost to me—here, there was no calculating, no wandering thoughts. I washere, breathlesslyhere, 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 onlynow, 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.”
34
THE NEXT MORNING, PALOMAand José Mendoza helped me put my trunks in the carriage. Mendoza held his hat in his hands awkwardly as Paloma and I embraced and both burst into tears, promising to write.
I watched them walk back through the gates of San Isidro.
Using José Mendoza as an intermediary, I had sold the land that our neighbor Hacienda San Cristóbal so greatly coveted. I had made Mendoza and Paloma keepers of the property in my absence and drafted a plan with them for how the new income would be used and invested. Reopening the hacienda’s general store for the first time since the death of old Solórzano, with all the villagers’ generations-old debts wiped away. Building a school for the children. It was the talk of the village, passed from hand to hand with loaves of pan de muerto as families prepared for the first of November, as they gathered in the graveyard behind the capilla and exchanged news over the crackling of small bonfires.
I had spent the holiday evening indoors with Paloma. We scattered bright cempasúchil petals around a small ofrenda for her mother, but she did not want to go to the graveyard. And I had no desire to go into the graveyard bearing offerings for the Solórzanos. Some wounds were too fresh. Perhaps they would heal, when we were ready for them to. Instead, we sat by the fire and talked long into the night, our conversation marked by the rising and falling of laughter, by the blue of a single plume of copal at the door.
I would miss her. Her bluntness. How her sense of humor bent wicked more often than not. But I knew she and I would correspond regularly. I had officially made her Mendoza’s heir as foreman. She would see the house repaired and cleaned; cover its furniture with dust cloths and keep the gardens alive. If I or my descendants ever found ourselves in need of its use, Paloma would see to it that the house would be ready and waiting. If I ever healed enough to return.
If.
“Are you ready, Doña Beatriz?” the driver asked.
“A few more minutes,” I said. There was one person I still had not yet said farewell to.
Andrés stood off to the side of the carriage, his shoulders stiff. He, too, watched the gates where Paloma and Mendoza had melted away, and did not look down at me until I walked the few steps between us and stood before him.
Finally, he met my eyes.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment.
“You could come with me,” I blurted out at last.
There was still time. The carriage could wait as we gathered his few belongings from the rooms adjoining the capilla. We could leave together, start a new life. Something unmarred and perfect and—
He dropped my gaze and turned his face to the side, looking away from me.
My heart sank.
