I stopped before the door, my heart hammering.
Andrés took the steps leading up to the door two at a time and reached for the handle before he noticed my reticence or the color draining from my face. I would not be surprised if he could hear the panicked thundering of my heart against my rib cage.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “She’s gone. The house is back to its old self.”
The house looked the same, but I could sense—somehow I could, somehow I could feel it, through my feet on the ground, through the taste of the air—that he spoke the truth. The energy of the house had softened. Whatever attention it had turned inward, on itself. I was not its focus. I was no longer a mouse walking into the jaws of a cat.
Andrés backtracked down the steps. He held out a hand. “It’s completely inhabitable now. It’s safe.”
For a moment, I wavered, considering his upturned palm. Perhaps I could step inside, if only to see for myself that he was right. That he had healed it.
Alcohol catching flame blazed through my mind. The flash of the machete. The certainty of heat, the inevitability of catching flame . . .
“No.” My throat tightened. I could still taste acrid smoke, hear Juana’s cry as she fell, hear the wet snap of bone. No, I could not go in. Not now. “It’s too much.”
“Beatriz.” His hand was still outstretched, his voice soft. “I spent the night here, without copal, to make sure of it. It’s very peaceful.”
I considered him warily. Why was he so eager to show me? Why did he feel the need to prove he was right? Didn’t he understand?
When I met his eyes, the answer opened before me, bright as the toll of the capilla bell.
Because he wants you to stay.
But I couldn’t.
I had once called the house before us mine. I came to its threshold with the confidence of a conqueror, of a general, ready to put down its rebellions and bend it to my will. I was wrong to. San Isidro could never have been mine. Never would be. It had never been Juana’s. Nor Rodolfo’s, nor any other Solórzano’s.
If it belonged to anyone, it was to the people who lived here, like Paloma and Ana Luisa and Mendoza. To Andrés. Or perhaps it belonged to no one, and would forever remain a willful, ancient domain unto itself. A pale stucco giant slumbering in this valley, its high walls looming, forever watchful, over the fields of maguey.
For me, it would remain a place of painful memories, lingering fear woven thick over the place like a shroud. I knew that if I stayed, I would suffocate beneath its weight.
“I can’t stay,” I breathed. “I’m leaving.”
Andrés lowered his hand. “Cuernavaca.”
“You must understand,” I said. “This house, the money. None of it matters unless I have Mamá. She apologized, in her letters, and I . . .” I trailed off, my voice wavering precipitously close to breaking. “I have to go to her.”
The lines of his face settled; his breathing shifted. “I know.”
We went for a long walk, my last survey of the property before leaving the next day. We crested the hill overlooking the neat rows of maguey and stopped to catch our breath. Or for me to catch my breath, rather—like the first time I had seen him walk up the hill to San Isidro, Andrés was infuriatingly at ease, as if he had expended no more energy than crossing a parlor on his long legs.
The wind had changed, and clouds thickened the blue sky. I pulled my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I traced the sweep of the valley before us, into the dark rolling hills of the mountains far away. A breeze swept through high golden grasses, a bite of winter on its breath. Far away, a boy whistled to his dog as they followed a herd of cloud-white sheep trotting across the valley floor.
“Will you ever come back?”
I turned to Andrés. His hands hung loose at his sides. I had noticed the backs of his hands were roped with strange new scars. I had not yet asked him about them, and I would not now.
He looked down at me with an expression I knew immediately was a mask, for it showed a calm too carefully composed to be natural.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “Say what you mean to say.”
A long moment passed where only the wind spoke. It lifted and whispered through the grasses, passing the quiet gossip of the valley to the hilltop.
I turned my face away from him, toward the shepherd and his flock far away. I had misspoken. I should have never agreed to be alone with him, not like this, not when I was raw. Not when my ribs ached with a sweetness that was not from mortal wounds.
The soft touch of fingertips at my wrist.
I looked up as he took my hand loosely in his. My breath caught as he lifted it to his mouth and pressed my knuckles to his lips.
Now his face laid his emotions bare: brows drawn together, a mournful earnestness in his hazel eyes that made my heart trip over itself.
Don’t go, that look said.
My pulse pounded in my ears. The breeze that rose stung my cheeks; they burned with a flush as we stood, locked in each other’s gaze for many heartbeats, still as figures in a painting.
He did not speak.
How could he? There was too much to say. The road we stood on led to nowhere but parting.
Somewhere over the mountains, a soft roll of thunder sounded.
Andrés cast a look up at the sky, soft annoyance crossing his features. As if he were displeased with the heavens for interrupting.
“Is it going to rain?” I whispered.
He still held my hand to his lips. I could almost feel his indecision against my skin. Of course it was going to rain. It always did, this time of year. But rain meant turning back, and turning back meant . . .
“I don’t think so.” His breath brushed against my knuckles, sending a shiver over my skin.
The wind tugged at my skirts. One cold drop, then another, struck my cheeks.
“Liar,” I said, and pulled my hand toward me. He released it, though his expression remained unchanged.
I turned away. I couldn’t bear to see it. Better to bid goodbye and get it over with than linger with him here. Better not to think about how perhaps, he was as lonely as I was. How perhaps he felt the tautness between us as I did, as a living, breathing thing. A creature of featherlight longing that bound us, though it rippled fragile as mist at sunrise. Perhaps he was afraid that my leaving meant losing it forever.
It would.
And that was the way it should be.
I repeated this over and over to myself, setting one foot in front of the other. I walked ahead of Andrés so I would not have to look at him and filled myself with stern determination. This was the way it must be. Loneliness had been a part of my life before, and perhaps it would be again—it was not something that would kill us.