“Is his mother still there?”
Martin shrugged. “I suppose.”
I wanted to know their names badly, but it would be too suspicious if I asked, wouldn’t it?
A clatter of hooves warned us that a horse was coming. I peeked outside the storehouse. A man in a white two-piece suit and a boater hat stopped by the entrance. Behind me, Martin groaned.
The man on the horse clapped.
“Martin Sabater! Come out so I can see you!”
“What the hell do you want?”
The dozen workers surrounding the area stopped whatever they were doing to watch.
The man on the horse flashed a piece of paper. “Do?a Angélica is suing me? She lent ears to her father’s nonsense?”
“I have nothing to do with this, Del Río. Talk to her!”
“Of course you have something to do with it. You run this damned plantation!”
“Do?a Angélica has never asked anyone’s permission to do anything. You should know that better than anyone.”
“Oh, shut up, Sabater.” He looked so arrogant with his chin slightly tilted up and his trim mustache. “If you don’t have any answers, then I shall go talk to her myself.”
He pulled on the reins and turned his palomino around.
“For Christ’s sake!” Martin darted to where his own horse was and got on top in one swift move.
If I had the smallest percentage of his skill with horses, I would’ve followed, intrigued as I was by his argument with this stranger, but I didn’t feel like breaking my neck this afternoon.
Instead, I meandered toward Pacha, dodging patches of manure and puddles of evening rain. I walked past a worker pushing a wagon—the one who looked like a caveman who had been removing beans from the cacao pods. They’d called him Don Pepe. I removed a few coins from my pocket and extended them to him.
“Who was that man on the horse?”
The man scratched his long beard, then took the money. “Fernando del Río. He owns the property next to this one.”
“He didn’t seem to get along with Don Martin.”
“Oh, no. They hate each other. Nobody here likes Don Fernando. They are always fighting over some land by the creek.”
“So, what is this about a lawsuit?”
Don Pepe shrugged and renewed his walk.
“Wait,” I said. “What’s the name of the family whose house got burned in the fire last year?”
“The foreman’s?”
I nodded.
The man tilted his hat back and scratched his thinning crown. I groaned, then removed more coins to pay him.
“His name was Pedro Duarte.”
“And the son’s name?”
“Franco.”
Franco Duarte. The name was foreign to me.
“And the mother?”
“Do?a Soledad. She’s the town’s curandera. Just ask anybody in Vinces and they’ll tell you how to find her.”
“One more thing,” I said.
The worker shot me another greedy look.
“How did the house burn?” I deposited more money on his callused palm.
“Nobody knows, but one thing is for sure, it wasn’t an accident.”
He picked up his wagon.
“Wait, why do you say that? How do you know?”
Don Pepe was about to say something else when another worker came near us.
“Good afternoon, se?or,” my informant told me, and dashed away.
*
That night, I woke up to a light tickle in my face. I rubbed my forehead, my eyes still shut, and felt something cold and smooth on my hand. I pushed it away and turned on the gas lantern on the bedside table. Holy Mother! There was a snake on my pillow! A real-life, long and curly snake with red, black, and white stripes.
And it had been slithering all over my face!
I covered my mouth to muffle a scream and jumped out of bed. How on earth had that thing found its way to my room and to my face? Had someone brought her? But how could that be when I lock my room every night?
Unless they had brought it earlier and I just noticed it now?
I was becoming paranoid. My window was open. Snakes abounded in the country. Besides, if someone had wanted to kill me, they would’ve found a more efficient method. The minute I thought this, the snake stuck its tongue out at me as though attempting to shoot poison. I shivered and rushed toward the door.
It could be a coincidence, but what better way to get rid of me than provoking an accident with a snake? No one would think it had been done on purpose.
I couldn’t stand being here one more minute. In front of the mirror, I attached my facial hair, put on Cristóbal’s spectacles and robe, and dashed out of the room.
There was someone coming toward me in the hall. I gripped the door handle. That someone was holding a candle.
“Don Cristóbal, what are you doing here? Is there something wrong?”
Julia.
I fought my impulse to scream. A man wouldn’t do that. Instead, I let go of the doorknob and fixed the collar of Cristóbal’s smoke jacket.
“There’s a snake in my chamber,” I said as calmly as I could muster.
“A snake? Virgen Santa. I’m so sorry, Don Cristóbal, that’s very common here, especially on cooler nights, such as this one.”
She called this a cool night?
“Allow me.” She entered the room.
A few minutes later, she came out, snake in hand.
“Good thing you didn’t touch it yourself,” she said. “These snakes are poisonous, and they attack when they smell fear, but I have been around them all my life so I’m not afraid of them.”
She walked past me as if she were carrying a tray of tea instead of a live snake.
“Good night,” she said.
I stood there for a moment, hand on my chest. If someone wanted to persuade me to leave, they were on the right track.
CHAPTER 14
Angélica
Vinces, 1907
“Thanks for saving my life yesterday,” I told Juan.
He was sitting under his favorite tree, holding a long bamboo stick.
When he looked up, my heart thumped against a shield of ribs and flesh. He was so handsome.