With all the eating and drinking, I was certain I wouldn’t see my sisters until the morning. It was my one chance to see what was inside that infamous drawer in my father’s study.
When the house was quiet, I descended the staircase, candle in hand, and snuck inside the room. I checked the drawer, but it was still locked. I felt under the desk, checked floorboards and bookshelves, but there was no sign of the key.
I sat in my father’s leather chair, deflated. The only thing left to do was convince Martin to leave the mystery aside and tell me what was inside the drawer. I crossed my hands behind my head and stretched my back. I was so tired of wearing this damned corset around my breasts.
In front of me was an oil painting of three windmills sitting on top of a hill. In the foreground was a field of wheat and behind it, rows of olive trees. It was La Mancha—the land of Don Quijote—a region I’d passed by on my way to Toledo many times. Funny, my mother had a similar painting. It looked like it had been painted by the same artist. My father must have brought it from Spain.
And then, I remembered.
I sprang from my chair.
My mother used to hide the key to her trunk behind the frame of that very same painting. She would hang it on the hook that held the picture up.
I lifted the painting from the hook.
And there it was.
An inexplainable lump came to my throat. My parents had more in common than I’d thought. How often had they thought of each other, I wondered, how much had they missed each other’s company, and how many habits and idiosyncrasies had they shared? I grabbed the key and tried it in the drawer’s lock. It worked! But nothing would’ve prepared me for what I found there.
A chess set?
I removed the wooden box to check underneath. There was nothing. But this couldn’t be it.
Why on earth would anyone hide a game? And what did this chess set have to do with my father’s plantation?
I set the board on the table to examine it. There was nothing extraordinary about it. On either side were drawers to hold the pieces. I shuffled through them and found another key.
This one was tiny and had a weird shape to it. It looked like the key to a safe. I groaned. Couldn’t my father be a little more straightforward? Now I had to look for a safe? Then I remembered that most safes usually had combinations, not keys. Maybe this was a key for those safety boxes kept at banks?
Yes, that had to be it.
In the morning, I would go to the bank and see if there was a match.
As I tiptoed across the patio, a quick movement to my side caught my attention. I turned toward the back door that Martin and I had used earlier today to leave the hacienda, and made out the shape of a woman in a cloak.
I spotted a flash of blond hair flying about. It could only be Angélica’s.
She didn’t see me as she opened the door and left the house, mingling with the shadows of the night.
CHAPTER 34
The bank manager was hesitant to let me open my father’s safe deposit box, but after I told him that Don Armand Lafont himself had left the key for my wife—the majority holder of all his properties—and that I would be willing to pay him a small fee for his help, he acquiesced. He added, as a means to justify his actions not only to me but also to himself, that he already knew that my father had made María Purificación the primary beneficiary of his will.
After showing me to my father’s safety box, he left me alone in the vault, a room with walls made of iron—a claustrophobic’s nightmare. My mother would’ve hated it. She couldn’t stand closed spaces and always left the windows open in our apartment, even when it was cold outside.
I unlocked the safe and remove a rectangular metal box. I tried to guess its contents. Money? Jewelry? A gun? But I was wrong. The only thing inside the box was a package of letters tied with a string.
I sat on a nearby bench and looked through the envelopes. There were about a dozen letters for my father from his daughter Elisa and, according to the stamps and addresses, they’d been sent from different locations in the country: Guayaquil, Manta, Machala. A couple were sent from Quito, the capital. They were piled up in order of dates: from the oldest to the most recent. Her handwriting had changed with time. On early envelopes, her letters were large and ended in curly tails, but in later ones her strokes were fast and reflected the evolution of a girl into a woman. If I had to guess, I would say she was an artist, though I didn’t know much about calligraphy readings. I checked the date on her last letter: it had been sent three years ago from Quito. Why had she stopped writing him?
I turned to the first envelope, dated 1909, and removed the letter.
Dear Papá,
It’s been two years since the last time I saw you. Did you see me on the hill when your daughter said she saw the Virgin? I gave her my doll so you would know that I came to visit. Do you remember me? I’m 12 years old now, but people say I look young for my age. I have been studying hard to be able to write to you. My teacher says I have good penmanship and “dedication.” I like school but sometimes I just feel like lying around, belly up, thinking.
Since we left Vinces, we’ve lived in many places. My mother is now with a puppeteer named Benjamin. She says they’re married, but I don’t remember any ceremonies. I just remember her coming to me one day and introducing him as my new father. She said to call him Papá, but I told her I already have a French father and his name is Armand Lafont. Did I do right, Papá?
I’m now learning to handle the puppets because Benjamin needs help with the show, but I’m a little tired of always performing the same story: La Caperucita Roja. I told him people already know it by heart and are getting tired of seeing the wolf eat the little girl and the grandma. The worst part is some silly tune I have to sing whenever Caperucita is wandering about the forest. I can’t get it out of my mind all day!