“Lucas, the priest?”
“Yes, the one who officiated at álvaro’s funeral. He’s been a friend of the family since they were small children. Fran and the whole family are devout Catholics. For me it’s not so easy to explain why I’m not a believer, but religion was important to Fran. It helped him enormously in his drug-treatment program; and for me, obviously, anything that helped him or made him stronger was a good thing. Though when your partner prefers to speak to a priest instead of to you, that’s hard to accept.” Manuel nodded in agreement. Those were his feelings exactly.
“Lucas told me the same thing he told the police,” she continued. “He heard Fran’s confession, and then they talked for an hour. When he left, Fran was entirely calm. There was nothing to suggest that he was contemplating suicide. I never saw him alive again. When I woke up the next morning and realized he wasn’t there, I came back here. And I found him.” She turned away to hide her tears.
Manuel lingered behind to give her some breathing space. He went to look for Samuel. The boy was still amusing himself with the kittens. After a while she returned and stood at his side. She was calm once more, but her eyes were still wet.
“Elisa, do you have friends or family? Anyone outside this place?”
She left Samuel with the kittens and began to stroll. Their steps turned toward the cemetery. “You want to know why I don’t just leave. Why stay here? My mother spends practically the whole year in Benidorm with her sisters. We don’t get along very well, and after my father died she moved to the coast. We call one another at Christmas and on birthdays. She thinks my life must be fabulous. That’s what she tells everyone.” Elisa gave a rueful little laugh. “I have a brother who’s a decent man. He’s married and has two girls, but, well, I lived a fairly wild life for a while, and we haven’t spoken for years. I don’t have anyone else. Our friends from those days are all dead, or they might as well be. There’s nothing for me out there. And besides, Samuel’s family is here.”
Manuel remembered Herminia’s comment about a child growing up surrounded only by adults. “Samuel could visit the family if you lived somewhere else.”
“Sure. But it’s not just that. I can’t leave.” She ran her hand along the edge of the cross where Fran’s name was engraved. “Not yet. Not until I’m sure.”
“Sure of what? What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know,” she said in a tired whisper.
“Herminia told me the doctor certified it as death by overdose.”
“I don’t care what the doctor said. I knew him, Manuel, I knew him better than anyone else in the world. He wouldn’t have sent me off alone and pregnant to wait for him in our bed if he was planning not to come back.”
Manuel stopped short, realizing that they were before álvaro’s grave. The flowers from the funeral drooped in the cellophane wrappers. Only the chrysanthemums showed any vigor.
He’d felt the same way. He’d thought he knew a man better than anyone else in the world.
He turned his back to avoid the name chiseled into the stone cross.
Sarita, the housemaid, appeared on the path. She stopped to greet the boy and exchange a few words, then came down the walk to the cemetery.
“What is it, Sarita?”
“Elisa, the lady marquess told me to bring the boy to her. She wants to see him.”
“All right.” The young mother lifted her eyes and gazed at the distant windows of the imposing manor.
A figure wrapped in black stood barely visible on the second-floor terrace. Manuel heard Herminia again: The old lady up there keeping an eye on everything.
Samuel toddled off holding Sarita’s hand without saying goodbye. Manuel watched them disappear into the distance, feeling a bit pained but surprised at the same time to find himself affected by the boy’s departure. He saw Elisa’s slight smile as she observed him.
“He’s very special, isn’t he?” she said.
He agreed. “Why’s he named Samuel?”
“I suppose you’re really asking why he doesn’t have his father’s first name.”
Manuel gave her a questioning look.
“Around here you don’t name a child for someone who’s died. It’s not an honor; it’s a curse.” She spoke with great seriousness, though she smiled as if to counter the bluntness of her declaration. “Well, every name belonged to someone else, sometime. There’s always someone who had the same name and is gone now.” A shadow passed over her face. “But Fran died a violent death, too young and certainly before his time. Many people around here believe the superstition that if you give a child the name of someone who died violently, that dead person’s ghost will carry him off.”
Manuel’s jaw dropped in astonishment. The fact that she was not a practicing Catholic was apparently no buffer against local tradition. He was so struck by her words that he found none with which to reply; and by the time he’d composed himself it was too late. Elisa was on her way along the shaded path through the trees to catch up with her son.
“Elisa!” he called.
She looked back and did her best to give him a smile of farewell. She wasn’t too convincing.
He stood there alone in the cemetery, feeling the wind that had buffeted the high clouds earlier now manifesting itself, ruffling his hair and stripping petals from the withered flowers to reveal the straw framework that clever hands had covered with asparagus leaves and wire twists to anchor the flowers. Hundreds of tiny red petals blew across the graveyard, where they appeared for all the world like shocking splotches of blood. The sight of the wire used to fasten the decapitated flowers was a sudden reminder. His recent experiences seemed to have given him a hard-won vantage point from which to detect the world’s deceptions: the wires, the ropes sustaining the scenery, the hanging counterweights, the dusty glow of the footlights, the shared illusions we want to believe.
“Everything is false,” he muttered, looking up. “It’s all lies.”
He picked up his jacket from the church step just as the rain began. He was about to hurry to the sheltered path, but beneath the beating of the rain he heard a sound of great pain, a hoarse, visceral groan, and the unmistakable sound of a man weeping. He realized that the church door he’d thought was locked was slightly ajar. The scent of candles and wood wafted forth as at the funeral service, mixed now with impassioned sounds of lamentation, as pain and profound grief gave in to despair. Manuel raised one hand to the gleaming varnished surface of the door. The stark metal handle was shaped like the point of a spear thrust through the door from the inside, sharp as the pain of the man within.
Manuel held himself back. A variant of Herminia’s words answered the question of who was lamenting inside: The man who was always weeping. The man with the hard eyes, the mournful, tender heart that had adored his brother as only a younger child can adore another. The only person of adult age entitled to the honor of the key to that sacred space: Santiago. So he was here on the estate after all. Herminia had lied to him or hadn’t known of his return.
Manuel pushed the door tentatively and it silently opened an inch or two more. Three dozen candles burned furiously on a stand to the right of the altar and threw a light that made identification easy. Santiago knelt on a prayer stool, his face buried in his hands as he wept, a garment of some sort pressed to his face to stifle his sobs. Manuel felt a mixture of shame and aching pain for the man. He was so struck by the sight of such raw pain that for the first time he was thankful he himself hadn’t been able to weep. At least he’d endured his bereavement and hadn’t allowed it to overwhelm him like this.
He ran through the pounding rain toward his car.