“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.”
A creak; the door shut. Footsteps retreated in the gravel, then faded entirely.
Padre Andrés turned and dropped to a crouch. He shoved the box to the side and lifted the altar covering that concealed me from sight. A thin veil of dust fell between us.
A moment passed. The dust settled. Reality settled: I was sitting on a dusty storeroom floor like a child, my knees pulled to my chest, looking up into the face of an unfairly handsome priest.
I sneezed.
“Salud,” Padre Andrés said solemnly.
His seriousness was so incongruous with our position that a sudden peal of laughter escaped my lips.
His finger flew to his lips. “Shh!”
I clapped a hand over my mouth to smother the sound but was unable to stop. I shook with silent laughter, tears leaking from my eyes.
Padre Andrés kept his expression carefully neutral, but I sensed he was mortified as I crawled out from under the altar. He held out a hand to help me to my feet. I accepted it, gasping for breath between stifled peals of laughter.
He released my hand as soon as I was upright, murmuring an apology, his gaze demurely downcast. “I was certain we would be undisturbed here. How Padre Guillermo knew . . .”
I waved a hand, finally catching my breath. “It’s all right,” I said, wiping tears from my cheeks and brushing dust from my skirts. When was the last time I had laughed like that? Sleeplessness was certainly stretching my sanity thinner than it had ever been. I inhaled deeply to compose myself and looked up at Padre Andrés, at the crease of concern that seemed permanently etched between his brows.
Papá distrusted the Church as a rule. Priests were conservative and corrupt, he said. I had never once told a priest anything aside from what was required from me in bland, unspecific confessions or society small talk. I knew I couldn’t trust them, not in my life before Papá’s death nor now, when I was alone in my torment in a cold, hostile house. Yet a curl of intuition drew me to Padre Andrés like moth to flame. You’ve never met a priest like him before, it whispered.
“We can speak freely here,” he said quietly.
And so I did.
He moved to my side, leaning against the altar as he listened. We had left the confessional behind, but I had never been so honest with a stranger. I laid everything bare, beginning when Rodolfo and I first arrived from the capital, with the red eyes I saw on that first night. I left out no detail. Not even Juana’s erratic behavior, believing me one day and dismissing me as mad the next. Nor did I forget Ana Luisa’s copal.
Padre Andrés listened, one hand rubbing his jaw thoughtfully, as I described the pounding on the doors and the cold that swept through the house and prevented me from sleeping. As I described the skeleton I had found in the wall that vanished.
When I finished, I glanced up at his face, bracing myself to see a look of horrified disbelief. Instead, Padre Andrés bit his lip, worrying it as he thought. He drummed the fingers of his left hand against the altar. “I think I can help,” he said at last.
A swell of relief overtook me. “Please,” I began. I tried to force a thank-you to my lips but couldn’t—for if I spoke, my voice would break, and take my composure with it. “Please come back to the hacienda.”
A long moment passed. I knew it was not an elegant invitation. It was just short of the begging of a madwoman. But I knew with a cold certainty, one that hung around my clavicles with the dread weight of a prophecy, that if I did not get help, I would die.
I had no one else to whom to turn.
Please.
“If anyone asks, say that you want Mass said for your villagers more regularly,” he said quietly. “It is common enough that, ah, no one will think more of it.”
No one clearly meant Rodolfo. So he knew of Padre Vicente’s letter and had decided to help me anyway. Another wave of gratitude rose thick in my chest. I wouldn’t have to explain that secrecy was required. He knew.
Because he believed me.
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
He pushed himself away from the altar. “I think . . . I must ask you a favor, Do?a Beatriz. I will need to stay long enough to walk through the house at night.”
“Of course. When can you come?” A tremble wound through my voice.
“As soon as possible. Tomorrow.” Now his attention was fully on me, he was present, and he was watchful. “Do you feel you will be safe until then?”
No, my heart cried, my chest tightening around it like a vise. No.
His gaze fell to my hands. I had been holding them clasped loosely before me, but now they were tight. Too tight.
That was answer enough for him.
“Burn copal,” he said firmly. “Fill any room you stay in with smoke.”
“What does it do?”
“It purifies your surroundings.”
So it did work. If I was to defend myself tonight, I needed it. I didn’t want protection; I wanted tools with which to protect myself. “I don’t have any. Do you—”
He looked over my head, scanning the shelves that lined the back of the room. “We keep some in here, for when we run out of the imported kind Padre Guillermo and Padre Vicente prefer . . . Wait one moment.”
The room was so tight, the space between boxes and altar and abandoned pews so narrow. It was impossible not to touch; his hands were ginger, light as the brush of a wing as they guided me by the shoulders to one side so he could step behind me.
From her quiet place on the shelf, Our Lady of Dust and Secrecy met my eyes over the priest’s shoulder.
Heat flushed my cheeks. I was certain she saw it.
“Here.” Padre Andrés turned and pressed three large pieces of resin into my palm, his fingertips brushing my wrist. He drew his hand back quickly and cleared his throat. “I will pack some things and come to the property tomorrow after Mass,” he said, serious once more.
“Thank you so much,” I breathed, my fingers curling over the resin. “How could I ever repay you for your help?”
He dropped his gaze, eyelashes brushing his cheeks, suddenly shy once more. “Tending to lost souls is my vocation, Do?a Beatriz.”
The tenderness in his voice stole something from my chest, leaving me vulnerable and imbalanced.