“We were speaking about Elisa,” he reminded her.
“Yes. The family treats her well, very well, in fact, and of course it’s because of the child. Santiago and Catarina love him. They haven’t had children yet, so they’re just crazy about Samuel, who’s an angel. You’ve seen him. Sweet, always smiling, always happy. álvaro adored him and would spend hours talking with him. It was so cute to see Samuel explaining things to his uncle with all the seriousness of a grown-up.”
“And?” He pointed to the ceiling and lowered his voice. “I saw her in Gri?án’s conference room, and she didn’t seem too kind either to Elisa or to the child.”
“The Raven?” She shook her head. “She’s not kind to anyone except maybe to Santiago’s wife, Catarina, whom she adores. But the child is Fran’s son and her grandchild. He has Mu?iz de Dávila blood, no matter how much she may curse that connection and do her best not to like him. He’s a Mu?iz de Dávila. For the moment he’s the only heir because Santiago has no children. For all of them, including her, that overrides any other consideration.”
He followed the path through the trees. Under the increasingly leaden sky, the occasional rays that had found their way through the treetops had become rarer and rarer. The shafts of sunlight that had colored the ground the previous day had yielded to dull gray reflections from the sky above. The leafy tunnel was dark but offered no promise of light at the end of it; though this long-enclosed space protected him from the stiff breeze, the rapidly falling temperature gave him goose bumps. Rain is coming soon, he thought. And he contemplated the deep sadness they assumed he was suffering. Gri?án and Herminia, in any case. He also had expected to feel such grief.
He was sad, certainly, but not the way he’d expected. If the thought of losing álvaro had occurred to him a month before, he’d have been sure he wouldn’t be able to survive or bear the pain. Memory of previous losses would have convinced him of that. He remembered how, after his parents’ sudden death, his sister had slipped into his bed every night to embrace him. He had been unable to stop crying at the never-ending grief of loss, the savagely cruel prospect of living as a pair of unloved orphans. For all the years after cancer carried off his sister, he’d thought he’d never love again. And then álvaro had arrived.
His refusal to mourn álvaro as the days passed was his refusal to accept that he’d been betrayed. It was also because he didn’t understand what had happened, who had murdered álvaro or why, or even what was happening now. And suppressing that grief had undeniably given him the dispassionate perspective from which to observe all this. That comforting detachment had been broken today when an old photo transported him unexpectedly back in time and space. He’d been struck by the impact of those eyes he knew so well, the assured and certain gaze brimming with the self-confidence he’d loved from the first but had been trying to forget. That courageous look, the look of a hero.
He put his hand to his pocket to make sure that haunting photograph was still there. Its slightly bent edges set themselves into the soft lining of his jacket. And into his heart.
He heard them before they came into view. Samuel’s pealing laughter at play was unmistakable as he threw a ball again and again against the church door. Elisa stood before him pretending to tend the goal, and the ball repeatedly bounced past her to the child’s chortling delight. He celebrated each goal by flapping his arms and running in circles.
The boy saw Manuel and came running. Instead of leaping into his arms as he’d done the day before, Samuel grabbed his hand and pulled him across the lawn. “Goalie! Goalie! You be the goalie!” His mother stood before the church door, smiling. “Mama, no more goals! Uncle, you be the goalie now.”
An amused Elisa shrugged and pretended she was giving up in defeat. She picked up her jacket from the front step and yielded her place to the newcomer.
Manuel took off his jacket and placed it by the door. “You’re in for it now, kid. I’m an unbeatable goalie!”
The boy rushed out to the middle of the clearing with the ball under his arm.
They played for a quarter of an hour. The boy yelled his head off every time Manuel stopped the ball and celebrated even more gleefully each goal he was allowed to score. Elisa looked on, smiling and encouraging her son, until Samuel began to slow down. By fortunate coincidence, just then four kittens, only a few weeks old, appeared on the trail and diverted Samuel’s attention. Manuel left the boy playing with the kittens and went to Elisa.
“I’m lucky you turned up,” Elisa said. “I was tired already, and the poor little fellow gets fed up playing only with me all the time.”
“Don’t mention it. It was a pleasure.” He turned to watch the boy and grinned when he saw that all four kittens were black.
“How are you doing?” Elisa asked him and sounded as if she really wanted to know. She wasn’t just greeting him or being polite.
“Fine.”
She tilted her head slightly to one side. He knew what that meant: disbelief. The gaze of someone who’s searching for a sign you’re lying. She looked back toward the graveyard and stepped off in that direction. He followed.
“Everyone claims you’ll get over it. They say things will get better over time. But it’s not true.”
He didn’t reply because in fact that was exactly what he was hoping: to put everything behind him and clear up the circumstances of álvaro’s death, so reverence, order, tranquility, and oblivion could reign. He knew Elisa wasn’t talking about him; she was speaking of her own grief.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a vague gesture toward the cemetery. “Gri?án told me what happened, and today Herminia described the circumstances.”
“Then you don’t know the truth,” she said sharply. Her voice was milder when she spoke a moment later. “Herminia’s not a bad soul. I know she really loved Fran; but neither she nor Gri?án knows what happened. No one does. They think so, but nobody knew Fran as well as I did. His father spoiled him and sheltered him from everything his whole life long. Everyone in this family saw him as a little boy. That’s how they treated him and how they expected him to behave. I’m the only one who saw Fran as the man he really was. And it wasn’t suicide.” She looked directly into his eyes as if challenging him to disagree.
“Herminia said she’d never seen anyone in such deep despair.”
Elisa sighed. “And she’s right. It frightened me after a while to see him like that. He did nothing but weep. Said nothing and refused to eat. It was all we could do to convince him to accept a little broth, but he was adamant. He sat up all night with his father’s body, accompanied the coffin to the church, and he and his brothers were the pallbearers who carried it to the grave. After they lowered the coffin into the grave, he stopped crying. He refused to say a word after that. He wanted to be alone. He pushed us all away and sat there on the soft earth by the grave, where he stayed all day. He refused to listen to reason. He just stared as they filled in the grave and then wouldn’t leave. Finally, when night fell, álvaro convinced him to come inside the church. That night before going to bed I went to see him and brought him something to eat. He was calm; he was coming to terms with his loss. He told me not to worry, everything would be all right. His father’s death had made him understand many things. He asked me to wait for him at the manor; he needed a little more time, because he was there with Lucas. He said he needed to talk to Lucas first, and then he’d come to bed.”