Page 28 of The Hacienda
Sunlight seared my eyes. I shook my head, blinking to clear my vision, and followed the white stucco wall of the church. What if I walked into another priest somewhere—how would I explain myself? The last thing I needed was to be caught stealing into a sacristy like a common thief, not after running afoul of Padre Vicente mere days ago.
But the alternative was to return to San Isidro without any help. And that was out of the question.
I turned a corner. A worn wooden door, only about as tall as I was, had been left slightly ajar, its angle an invitation. Was that the door to the sacristy storeroom? I slipped through it as quickly as I could and collided very solidly with Padre Andrés.
He leaped back.
“Excuse me!” I gasped at the same time he held a finger to his lips for silence.
I edged away from Padre Andrés as he closed the door, and immediately bumped into an abandoned pew. An old altar, covered in cobwebs and stacked with ceremonial linens, dominated the back of the room; rickety shelves lined the walls, stuffed with bowls and wooden chalices covered in a thin layer of dust.
I slipped back to the altar, sheepishly putting as much space between myself and Padre Andrés as possible. Which wasn’t much—even without the clutter, the room was cramped at best. I was surprised Padre Andrés didn’t knock his head against the ceiling as he turned to face me.
“My apologies about the confessional, Doña Beatriz,” he began. “I think here will be—”
There was a rap at the door.
Padre Andrés froze. Then the gravity of the situation struck me like a blow: what if someone opened the door and found us alone here?
Then—be Andrés a priest or not—I would have something even worse to explain to my husband than asking for an exorcism.
We stared at each other in shocked silence, momentarily paralyzed, realization of our predicament thick as copal on the air between us.
A second rap at the door. “Padre Andrés!”
Padre Guillermo’s voice.
I darted around the back of the altar and ducked beneath it, yanking my skirts around my legs and tucking my knees to my chest. Padre Andrés’s black trousers and shoes crossed the room in a step and a half; then a box scraped across the stone floor in front of the altar and he pivoted on his heel.
Daylight flooded the storeroom.
“Padre Andrés!” Padre Guillermo huffed. “Padre Vicente told me you were in the confessional with a parishioner.”
“I was looking for my prayer book, Padre Guillermo,” Padre Andrés said smoothly. “Of course it was an accident.”
But this was not. If anything about this conversation went awry, there was no explaining away why I was curled into a ball beneath a dusty altar with Padre Andrés concealing me.
A dusty, faded red cloth covered the middle of the altar, hiding me from sight, but beyond it I could see a dusty statue of la Virgen on a shelf. Her hands were spread wide, her painted face perfectly beatific.
Help, please. The thought flew from my mind before I could summon the shame to stop it. As if that prayer were worth listening to. Who would intercede on my behalf in a situation like this? Our Lady of Dust and Secrecy? Our Lady of Women Disobeying Their Husbands?
Padre Andrés smoothly diverted Padre Guillermo’s attention away from the confessional incident and drew him deep into some town affair involving the Sunday bell ringer and his incurable pulque habit. Soon he would usher the priest out and the danger would be gone.
Ducking beneath the altar had disturbed dust; it rose around me in afaint cloud. My nose itched with the beginning of a sneeze. Panic budded in my chest as I fought to suppress it, too afraid to move. If I failed, my hiding place would surely be revealed—
“What are you doing in here?” Padre Guillermo asked at last.
“Oh,” Padre Andrés drawled innocently, as if only then remembering his surroundings. “Penance, Padre.”
“You’re praying in here?”
“Dusting. Organizing. As you instructed me to do two weeks ago, and which I clearly haven’t done.”
Padre Guillermo’s sigh was deep. Long-suffering, but also affectionate. That was a sigh I had often directed at Mamá—the sound of someone who had long put up with the whims of a daydreamer. “Ay, Andrés. What will we ever do with you?”
“The Lord is in all things, Padre,” said Padre Andrés. “Buenas tardes.”
“Buenas tardes.”
