He walked a step ahead of me to the next small house and rapped on the door. It opened; warm light from inside slicked his rain-soaked shoulders, caught on the drops that fell from the rim of his hat as he dipped his chin.
He greeted the young woman at the door cordially, smiling at the baby on her hip as he introduced her to me as Belén Rodríguez. Briefly, he explained that he thought it best that all the villagers stay inside once the sun set. Belén followed Andrés’s movements as he turned to me and took copal from the basket. Assessment flickered behind her eyes when they lingered on me, even as she accepted the incense Andrés offered.
I thought you would be like the other one, Paloma said. Was this woman also wondering why the wife of the patrón stood next to the witch priest in the mud and the pouring rain?
The answer to that was simple: Andrés was still injured, and I had not let him out of my sight since finally bringing him out of the green parlor at midday. There were moments he swayed on his feet; memory recall seemed to cause him intense physical pain. His frustration with himself was palpable. It simmered beneath his calm exterior, turning ever inward. I had watched over him as he napped on the terrace, and now we were preparing for nightfall.
There was something about battle that changed the way a man felt about his comrades, Papá said. Andrés and I had seen a fierce battle together and barely made it out alive. I had known him for such a short time, yet I felt bound to him. I called it loyalty. Perhaps it was something deeper.
But the villagers did not know that. As far as they knew, he was still their invincible son; the blow to his head had not touched Andrés’s air of quiet authority.
Our work done, Andrés and I walked side-by-side in silence toward the capilla. He had agreed with me that spending the night alone in the house was dangerous, and that I should not endure it. With little fanfare, he decided that I would spend the night in his rooms.
This was what I had wanted, too, without knowing how to broach it. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a touch scandalized by how quickly he had come to such a conclusion.
Andrés opened the door, and I immediately understood his reasoning.
There was a fire lit in the hearth and leftovers from the afternoon’s meal on the small table. Paloma knelt in the corner, unfolding blankets and spreading them on the ground opposite Andrés’s cot.
She looked up in surprise when I stepped over the threshold.
“What is she doing here?” she cried as Andrés entered and shut the door.
Ah. Rather than brave the small house where her mother had died, Paloma was going to spend the night under the same roof as her cousin. And Paloma’s presence made mine permissible.
“I think it is clear that the situation requires unusual measures in order to ensure everyone’s safety,” Andrés said softly.
“But—”
“Would you want to spend the night alone in the house?” I added. It was without question that the house was unsafe. To be alone anywhere on the hacienda grounds was unsafe. I was sure that was why she was here—so that Andrés could keep her safe from whatever prowled in the darkness outside.
Paloma stared at me, somewhat aghast. She opened her mouth to speak, then met her cousin’s gaze over my shoulder. Whatever look he gave her was enough to settle the matter.
We ate in relative silence. After Andrés said the blessing, Paloma asked him the occasional question about villagers and their reactions to our crepuscular visits bearing copal. She did not invite my input, so I kept to myself until it was time to prepare for sleep.
Then Andrés pointed to the cot. “Do?a Beatriz, you can—”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“Don’t be an idiot, Andrés.”
Paloma and I met eyes. We had spoken in the same breath, our voices ringing with twin chastisement. Neither of us would let Andrés sacrifice a good night’s sleep in this state, my status as the lady of the property be damned. He was outmatched two to one for stubbornness. And he knew it.
“Ya, basta,” he sighed in defeat.
I moved my makeshift sleeping pallet—a bundle of blankets on a thick patterned rebozo—to a space near the door and sat, relieved that Paloma seemed to have forgiven my presence. I busied myself with taking my hair down as Andrés sat obediently on the bed at Paloma’s instruction.
“Can’t you do anything to heal yourself?” she asked softly. “Remember what Titi said about severe headaches, that—” Then, mid-sentence, her voice spilled into their grandmother’s language.
My fingers slowed as I braided my hair. Had she been speaking castellano all this time for my sake?
Andrés made a soft noise of understanding, then touched fingertips to his temples gingerly. “If I could remember how, I would,” he replied in castellano. I lost it as a child. Not fully, it seemed. He seemed to understand Paloma perfectly as she carried on speaking in a low voice, switching from one language to the other until she abruptly burst into tears.
Poor Paloma. I turned my body away from her and Andrés as I nestled beneath my blankets, hoping to give her some semblance of privacy. I curled into a fetal position, thinking of the nights Mamá and I spent in the narrow bed at Tía Fernanda’s. How hard I sobbed—for Papá, for the loss of our life, for the loss of my future. Paloma was proud and would likely not accept spontaneous sympathy from me. But if she ever asked, I knew then it would come pouring out of me like a flood.
Presently, their conversation calmed, and slowed; I heard Paloma settle into her bundle of blankets and, after a few minutes of silence, start to snore lightly. I shifted to put my back to the wall. Though by then I had closed my eyes, sleep did not come so easily. I listened to Andrés rise and rake the embers in the fire, the brush of bare feet on the ground, the shift of fabric being folded, the strike of flint and the blooming aroma of copal. A soft shuffle back to the bed.
I slitted my eyes, peering out through a veil of lashes. Andrés lay on his bed with one hand under his cheek. The crease of pain that he had carried all day between his brows had softened at last; his chest rose and fell slowly. If he was not asleep, he soon would be.
The fire lowered to embers. Its cast dyed his face the deep orange of twilight after a storm. Shadows hollowed his cheeks and the circles beneath his eyes.
Aren’t you frightened? Do you know what he is capable of?
I should be afraid of everything he did last night: calling on spirits, rising into the air. Everything I had ever heard from a pulpit or a whispered ghost story told me that witches were dangerous. They were cronies of the Devil.
Perhaps I was frightened of him. But one could fear and trust at the same time: whether because of that curl of intuition that drew me to him when he first came to San Isidro or because of the way he looked at me as if I were the sunrise at the end of a long, harrowing night, I believed he would not harm me.
These thoughts swirled through my mind as the embers died, their weight drawing me down into sleep at last.