Page 107 of The Hacienda
“I can’t.” His voice cracked. “This is who I am. This is my home.”
Andrés the priest. Andrés the witch. He was a fractured creature, stretched between darkness and light. He belonged to this place in ways I could never comprehend, and he chose to keep belonging: the village. His family. The Church. His land.
“I know,” I breathed.
But I offered no apology for what I had said. It was what a deep, selfish part of me wanted: I wanted to steal him away and make him mine. I wanted to keep him always by my side; I wanted his hand clasped, warm and strong, over mine. I wanted himnearwith an ache that carved bone deep.
And I understood it was not possible.
As I took a step backward, he lifted his head. For a moment, I thought of his face last night, how its lines were softened by the dark. How his eyes had fluttered closed as our linked breathing drew us slowly toward sleep. How young he had looked. How at peace.
Now his eyes were bloodshot, his mouth set in a hard twist that betrayed how he fought to keep his composure.
If only I could speak. If only I could say something to alleviate his pain and mine, but I couldn’t. There was a tempest inside me, thoughts jostling one another back and forth, struggling to be set free: I could say how I would carry him with me always. How he had saved my life and I would be forever in his debt.
How I longed for him to chooseme. How I was angry he would not leave everything behind for me.
How ardently I wished for him to never, ever change.
But for all that, I had no words.
In that moment, we were two people standing opposite each other on the road. We had walked it together, holding each other close in the dark,but now our paths forked. His led one way, back to the village, back to his family, back to San Isidro.
Mine led another way: to Cuernavaca. To Mamá. To a wealthy widow’s freedom, a freedom that was so frighteningly my own I barely knew how to hold its reins.
But I would learn how. I would learn to carve my future into whatever I wished it to be.
I had Andrés to thank for that. For believing me when I could not believe myself, for reaching into a nightmare and drawing me to a dawn.
But now the gray mists of dawn had burned away, and day was garish bright around us. He had given me a new chance at life. The only way to repay such an act was tolive. I knew the only way for me to heal, to fully live again, was to leave San Isidro behind.
“I will always trust you,” I breathed. “Adios.”
Then I turned my back on Andrés, on Hacienda San Isidro, and stepped into the carriage.
35
ANDRÉS
THE CARRIAGE WAS GONE.I knelt in the dust, staring at an empty horizon.
You will learn to feel it.Those were some of the last words Titi said before I left for the seminary in Guadalajara.When the time comes, you will know what is right.
Holding Beatriz in my arms felt right. Giving in, losing myself in her dark hair, in the warmth of her body, the brush of her lips over my skin—that, too, had feltright.
And yet... so did this.
All this time, I thought knowing what was right would bring me peace or contentment. Instead, sorrow draped leaden across my shoulders as I watched the empty horizon, every fiber of my being willing the carriage to turn back.
But it wasrightfor Beatriz to leave.
Her need to heal was profound, and I knew it simply could not beaccomplished beneath San Isidro’s roof. Yes, I had purged the house of its malice, cleansed its energy. But when I saw the fear that bloomed in her eyes when she looked up at the house, I knew there was nothing more I could do. She deserved a life free of such fear.
I had to let her go.
Beatriz leaving San Isidro would give the hacienda the spaceitneeded to heal. I had sensed when I met her that she was not like the other Solórzanos, and I had been right—but not everyone who lived on this land knew and trusted her as I did. So long as she remained, she would be the symbol of the family that had carved so much damage into the land and its people. For too many generations, there had been a Solórzano to fear in the great house of this hacienda. Too many generations of pain. If the people who owned this land in deed never again lived on its soil, I could only envision peace coming of it for my family and the others who lived here.
But thickness welled in my throat at the thought of Beatriz never returning. Selfishly, I could not bear the idea. Her presence in my life the last few weeks turned my world on its head, pulled me out of my festering resentment for the Solórzanos and into action. It was her intercession that had ended my banishment and brought me back home. Without her, who knew how long San Isidro and my family would have suffered from haunting and hacendado alike.
