I had no other choice but to continue shoving copious amounts of food in my mouth until I found the perfect moment to escape.
The time came after dinner, when Angélica invited the group to the patio. There, they’d set up three rows of tables. On each table were bingo cards and chips. I sat in the last row.
There was a lot of movement around me. Laughter, gossip, men flirting with women and women flirting with men. The only person who seemed as out of place as me was Catalina—I only hoped she stayed here and didn’t decide to wander about the house, too.
As Laurent and Angélica called out numbers, I took advantage of the distraction and, making sure no one was watching, I stepped away from the group at the same time a woman yelled: “Bingo!”
I darted up the stairs, glancing behind me every few minutes, and headed straight to Angélica’s bedroom. Hopefully, she didn’t lock her door.
Drying my sweaty hands on my trousers, I turned the knob.
My sister’s chamber consisted of two rooms: a sitting area and a sleeping area. I felt a little stupid standing there, not knowing where to look, playing detective. What could I possibly find here to tie my sister to Franco?
“Quiere cacao, quiere cacao.”
?Mierda!
Ramona flew toward me. I ducked.
“Quiere cacao, quiere cacao.”
“Shhh,” I told her, but she kept repeating the same mantra.
Before anyone else could hear her, I headed for one of the night tables and opened the top drawer. There didn’t seem to be anything remotely incriminating unless you considered a French-Spanish dictionary and a jewelry box suspicious. Inside the second drawer was a pile of letters wrapped in a red ribbon. Upon inspection, there seemed to be letters to Angélica from different men. Admirers? I thought it strange that she would keep letters from other men in close proximity to her husband.
There didn’t seem to be any correspondence from Franco, at least not in the letters I checked. Underneath all the envelopes was a photograph of a little girl, her face vaguely familiar though I couldn’t pinpoint why. I was only certain that this wasn’t Angélica or Catalina because both of my sisters’ coloring was much lighter than this child’s. The girl, who couldn’t have been older than ten, stared at the camera with a hardened expression, as though she couldn’t stand the thought of having her picture taken. But there was more than anger here. Her expression revealed pain, too, as if she’d been crying minutes before the picture was taken. Her hair was fixed in two stiff braids and she wore a sailor dress she had outgrown.
As I circled the bed toward the other table, I noticed a glass box sitting under the window. A rectangular, large cage. A slight tremor took over my legs. I slowly made my way to the cage. Curled on the bottom, behind a large rock, was the red, black, and white snake I’d seen in my room. Ramona became more agitated. She flew over my head. This time she was saying something else, some kind of warning, but I couldn’t understand her.
My hands turned sweaty.
Why would Angélica keep a snake in her room? Even worse, why was her venomous snake in my bed the other night? It would be too much of a coincidence that it had escaped its properly secured cage and found its way next to me, wouldn’t it?
But I didn’t have time to ponder any further because there was a noise in the hall. I looked around in despair, but before I could move a single muscle, I heard someone at the door, and that someone was turning the knob.
CHAPTER 20
Catalina Vinces, 1907
Yesterday I saw that girl again. She waved at me from the other side of the pond. Part of her allure was that she didn’t have to wear fancy clothes like Angélica and I did. I was tired of fluffy sleeves and long stockings. I wished I could just wear a slip all day and run along the stream like Elisa did. I waved back and circled the pond to meet her.
“I have something for you,” she said. She was kneeling by the edge of the water, her fingers buried in the mud. One of her tight plaits fell on her shoulder.
“It’s not a snail, is it?” I said, grimacing.
“No.”
I jumped up and down. “Then, what is it? What is it?”
“I can’t tell you.” She turned around to make sure no one was behind us and whispered. “Tonight. At your house.”
“But Mamita will be cross with me.”
“She won’t see me.”
I hoped she was right. The last time Mamita had seen me talking to Elisa, she’d yelled and spanked my bottom. “I don’t ever want to see you with that girl again! You hear?” she’d said.
I’d promised I wouldn’t talk to her again, but Elisa was so much fun. Much more pleasant than Angélica, who never let me touch her dolls.
“You’ll get them dirty,” she would say, wiping Ursula’s porcelain cheeks with a moist handkerchief. “Look at your hands! Don’t you see that these dolls are ornaments? You’re too young to understand now, but when you’re thirteen, like me, you will.” She smiled that awful, evil smile of hers. Her teeth in perfect alignment already, unlike mine which were just coming out, big and awkward in a foreign mouth. “Well? Don’t you have something better to do? Why don’t you go practice your violin or play with Alberto?”
Oh, if I could just pull those blond ringlets out of her stiff head!