When they snapped back, she knew he’d seen her.
His mouth stayed open. But even from this distance she could see the rage, the disbelief, boiling down into one expression.
She held his stare. She didn’t want anyone else blamed for this. Not Calla. Not Fel. And for one reckless minute she wanted him to throw her out of the gardens. She didn’t want any part of the little kingdom he meant to make out of La Pradera.
With the glow from the carriage house, and the warmth of the champagne spreading through her, there was nothing to fear in the whole world. He could kick her out if he wanted to. She’d die a legend. She’d be a story Dalia could pass on to the next Nomeolvides daughters.
Estrella would be the girl who went out in the light of all those flames.
She raised the bottle in Reid’s direction, the pink foil label peeling under her fingers, and she swallowed the last of the champagne.
SIXTEEN
The woman who insisted Fel call her Abuela Lila told him that, between the flower beds, the blossoming trees, and the sunken garden, there were more petals in La Pradera than souls in the world. Everything here bloomed. The clouds of hydrangeas and lilacs. The arbors and trellises. The beds of lilies and hyacinths.
So when Fel had first seen the fire, he’d thought it was made of petals. He’d thought their flicker was the fast and sudden blooming of red and orange flowers.
But as he came closer, the flames resolved, looking more like liquid, like spilled molten iron, than petals.
The fire had seemed small until he went through the doors. The smoke had gathered hard and thick enough that it choked him. It stung with each breath but something about it felt familiar. Not comfortable, but known.
He felt the fire’s warmth on his forearms as he checked the smoke-filled room. But it wasn’t until Reid came for Estrella that Fel understood she had set it.
By now, the firemen had gone. The smoke had risen toward the sky and faded. And La Pradera smelled so much like ash that it reminded him of fall, the burning of leaves.
Reid came to the stone house, where the grandmothers’ staked vegetable plants and fluffy herbs seemed like chicks gathering around a hen.
Estrella knelt in the side yard, bringing up borraja petals in the shadows of tomato plants. Her cousins were brightening a sparse flower bed with pink and orange flowers. Fel had just softened it by running a tiller through the empty earth, and now he was doing the same with a cleared-out herb bed the grandmothers would replant. He pushed the tiller through the dirt, and the metal spurs glinted silver against the dark earth.
But Reid did not cross the break in the low garden wall or follow the path toward the front door. He did not enter the trembling gardens crowded with dark green leaves and trails of flowers.
He said Estrella’s name with the solemn tone of a priest calling her to confession.
Estrella drew her hands out of the earth. She brushed her fingers first against each other and then against her skirt, leaving faint shadows on the pink fabric. And she followed him, her shoulders straight, drawing herself up to her full height so completely that for a minute she looked as tall as her mother. She interlaced her fingers in front of her, and that stoic look, like she was an accused witch going to her trial, thickened Fel’s apprehension into worry.
That worry loosened his grip on the hand tiller. It urged him after her. But as she passed the low stone wall, she paused, letting Reid get a few more steps in front of her.
She turned back, so quickly Reid did not notice. She kissed her fingertips and blew air over her palms at her cousins. It made her look like she was starting off on a trip and would bring them all back glittering stories as souvenirs.
That gesture was for her cousins. She caught each of their eyes, and didn’t seem to notice Fel standing with the tiller, the metal stars slowing until they were still. She had set a fire to tell Reid how little she wanted him here, and she had done it in a dress nice enough to wear to Easter service. A slip the pale blue of a robin’s egg showed at the hem. Her lips shined a darkened shade of the same rose color as her dress.
Since she had found him in the valley made of flowers, his soul had searched after the muted colors of a life he could not remember. He had come from a world that was so gray and dulled he wondered if maybe it had been el Purgatorio, the place where he’d been meant to work out his sins. But it had been familiar, and he remembered enough good in it that he had wanted to go back. To find the things he had lost. To learn the name and features of the one who had taken care of him, negotiated for stale bread and unrendered manteca, given him the little wooden horse to keep in his pocket.
But now he wanted this. He wanted this painted world that thrilled him even as it frightened him. He wanted to understand the language of women who laughed with tears dampening their cheeks, even if he would never speak it.
He wanted the color of this unknown life. He wanted to grow the kind of bright, fearless heart that lived in this girl.
SEVENTEEN
Estrella knew this room. She knew its antique chaises, its marble-bordered fireplace, its cut-crystal decanters of port and plum brandy that the fireplace lit up like gemstones.
When Marjorie had been alive, it was a room where guests gathered after parties, draping themselves on the damask and brocade. It was where Marjorie convinced men a few drinks deep that the best investment they could make was the tailor’s shop or bookstore in town, or the theater that was a month from shutting down, or that they should put up the money to repave a cobblestone street in exchange for a plaque declaring the town’s gratitude.
Good talk about your name is priceless, she urged, refilling their drinks, laughter at the corners of her mouth because she never cared what anyone said about her. Only what they said about Bay, and Estrella’s family.
But daylight made this room seem sad, desolate. Like the way funeral flowers smelled flat and chalky after the mourners left.
Reid slipped the cuff links from his shirt and folded up the cuffs. Estrella flinched, wondering if he might hit her.
He set out two glasses and uncapped a crystal decanter.
“That wasn’t just any car,” he said, his tone factual, uninvolved. “It wasn’t some new model off the lot.”
Of course it wasn’t. Estrella had seen enough nights of rich men’s Morgans and Aston Martins crossing La Pradera’s gates. They considered new cars garish, showy. Instead, they bought older ones, secondhand, limited editions that cost more than new cars.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “But I think I know enough to know you don’t want your family to have to pay for your mistakes.”
The words snaked down her back, cold as the drops off an ice cube.
“That sounded like a threat, didn’t it?” he asked. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
His voice was open enough that she almost believed it.