The new name sent a pain through Cayetano’s chest. His week of sulking seemed so trivial after hearing himself be called Papá by a child who trusted him that much.
Giacomo popped his head out of the fort and smiled so much Cayetano saw every one of his baby teeth. “Guess what, Papá?”
“What’s that?” Cayetano asked as he bent down; yellow dust covered his jeans the moment he touched the earth.
“I have a loose tooth!” Giacomo replied.
“Me, too!” Enzo said.
“You do not,” his brother shot back.
“I know who does have a loose tooth,” Enzo whispered. “The dead people Mummy found in the ground.”
Cayetano glanced over his shoulder; he observed Luna through a gap in the fence, presumably there so she could keep a very close eye on her boys. “What going on?” he whispered.
“Mummy said there are people who need to be in the hands of love. Someone has to dig them up and save them. The mountain can have peace when the people go home to their families.”
Cayetano smiled; explaining this to children wasn’t an easy task; however, Luna had spent time thinking of the right words.
“Mummy says that sometimes bad things happen, but now we can do the right thing for lost people, and the bad things will be fixed. Scars will heal if we take special care with hurt people.”
The innocence of the sentence gave everything so much clarity.
“Mummy said that every person can be a hero, and heroes need to speak, so people’s stories can be told. Brave people have brave stories.”
Cayetano smiled, an involuntary reaction to the tenderness of the boys’ words. He had underestimated their level of understanding of the situation, but they knew what was happening, and Luna had made the blows much easier to bear. She had done that without Cayetano. She had decided to change her life for him, but Cayetano was making it harder with everything she had to cope with on her own. He brought nothing to the table. He had never felt so useless. “It’s lucky that Mamá is here. If these people need the hands of love, then these people are in safe hands with your Mamá.”
Luna stood up over the blue fence and glanced down the hill in Cayetano’s direction. The ponytail of her beautiful long black hair whipped around in the steady breeze. She held something in her hands, but Cayetano didn’t see what had been uncovered. Her face remained emotionless, and Cayetano swallowed hard.
“I hope I’m welcome,” he said as he approached the fence.
“I guess so.”
“Did I miss anything?” Cayetano smiled and hoped for a response.
Without a word, Luna held out her gloved hand. Cayetano looked down at a ring, filled with dirt. Luna pointed over her shoulder and Cayetano stepped up through the fence and looked into what was now a two-foot deep hole.
A man he recognised as Jorge Arias and a man of a similar age sat on all fours, brushes in hand. Between them lay a skeleton, all unearthed. It rested on its side, its hand over its face. A human skeleton. Cayetano’s blood ran cold, like a painful shot of fear and realisation. They had found two skulls to begin with, but this body lay intact, so at least three people were here.
“It’s a woman,” Luna explained. “Young, they think.” She pointed to a woman a small distance away, who was photographing something, out of Cayetano’s line of sight. “The skulls we found; we found the bodies, but they were…” Luna paused and peered over the fence, to check if the boys were listening… “cortados en trozos.”
Cut into pieces. Cayetano tried to look around the other woman, but wasn’t sure he wanted to see any more. “So much has been done today.”
“It needs to be done as soon as possible. Leaving bodies uncovered isn’t good for them. They deserve a bit of dignity, not left to the elements.”
Jorge looked up from his spot and nodded hello to Cayetano. No need for an introduction, all the workers glanced in his direction with an expression of recognition. Cayetano folded his arms over his chest, in an attempt to hide how much this situation bothered him. “So, three bodies?”
“Four, we found another intact skeleton which hasn’t been uncovered yet. It’s going to take some time to clean and photograph everything before they’re moved. Looks like three women and a man. Someone hated women when they dumped bodies out here.”
“How old are they?”
“The bones are about fifty years old, so Jorge reckons.” Luna glanced over at her friend, and he looked up and nodded.
“No civil war bones, then.”
“No, but a mystery all the same. Since you and I have been here, we need to take DNA test, so our biological imprint is removed from all the tests. Miguel will need to as well since he’s been up here…”
“I will talk to Miguel.”
“He was here earlier.”
“I told him to stay away from you, but he said he wanted to apologise.”
“Darren was here, too, down at the house.”
“What did he want?”
“Darren? To talk in private, not knowing about the project.”
“That guy needs a smack in the mouth – again.”
“Why is that the answer to everything?”
“Well, you haven’t dealt with him, so I have to do something.”
“I can deal with anyone, old friends included.”
“Not that you have many of those anymore.”
Luna noticed Jorge widen his eyes as he listened to them bicker. “Thanks, Caya. I’m well aware of how shitty my life is, but at least I’m not dead, unlike these people before us. Did you come to help, or hinder?”
“Help!”
“Then why don’t you go and watch the children, so I don’t have to get up from my job every twenty seconds?”
Jorge waited until Cayetano stepped through the fence again and down towards the children. “Luna, when you put that ring away in the collection, can you double check the size of the shoes we found with this body?”
Luna nodded and went around the edge of the grave and over to the table on the far side of the dig. They had laid out personal items found near the bodies, to help with identification. Jorge continued to brush around the ribcage of body number one, when something caught his eye. He pulled the silver trinket from the earth with care.
“Shit,” Rubén said next to him, “is that a Guardia Civil button?”
“It’s possible,” Jorge muttered. He looked up to the table, but Luna wasn’t there. “Luna?” he called out. Nothing. Maybe she was with the kids. Jorge jumped up from the body and looked over the fence; the children were alone; neither of their parents were there.
Jorge heard Luna’s voice, a short, sharp cry, and he spun around. Rubén and Alicia both glanced up from their spots and looked at one another. Jorge crossed the dig site and placed the button on the table and jumped through the far side of the fence.
“LUNA!”
Cayetano ran past Jorge without even looking the man, but the young guy witnessed the desperation in the bullfighter’s eyes. He followed Cayetano, who started down the steep hillside, slipping and sliding on the myriad of rocks among the trees. Jorge finally saw what Cayetano headed towards down the hill.
Cayetano wasn’t sure if the world above him had stopped; the sound of his pulse pounded in his ears and deafened everything. He ground himself to a stop against a pine tree as he caught sight of Luna’s pink shirt. It peered out from the brown and green that made up Rebalsadors mountain. There she was, near the bottom the hill, face down the dust. “Oh God,” his voice shuddered. “Please, God, not now, please not now.” She had been angry at him, and it had echoed his mind with worry, but what confronted him now?
As Cayetano skidded down the hill, he heard voices. Jorge must have followed him. He clambered down to Luna’s body and fell to his knees. He didn’t want to touch Luna, he was afraid of what he would find if he moved her. The dig site had threatened their future marriage, his career had as well. Luna’s recent illness had been overwhelming her, but today on t
he dusty hillside at Escondrijo, Cayetano had to be prepared for a new pain.
“Don’t move her, Cayetano!” Jorge yelled, and Cayetano looked over his shoulder. Jorge and his friend were climbing down the hillside. “If she damaged her neck we can’t move her!”
“How can I not?” Cayetano shrieked. His love was lying face down in the dust. He moved her tenderly, and peering at Luna’s face, he didn’t even recognise her. She was nothing more than a mess of blood and dust. She was breathing. Sort of. Her body made a half-hearted attempt to draw in air. She was still alive.
“Be careful, Cayetano,” Jorge said as he fumbled with his phone. “Her neck, her spine…”
Cayetano glanced down the length of her crumpled body; she had broken her arm. He had never seen an arm bend the wrong way like that. His stomach lurched. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t make a decision. Jorge’s voice on the phone punctuated the panic. Ambulance.
“There’s an ambulance in Serra,” Jorge stumbled. “They might be able to find us out here.”
Cayetano thought of the day he and Luna found Alejandro’s body in the house. It had taken well over an hour for the ambulance to arrive. His body. Cayetano brushed Luna’s hair from her face, matted in blood. “We need to get her to the house.”
“No, they’re saying don’t move her,” Jorge replied with his phone to his ear. “She may have hurt her spine.”
She was so white. So limp. “If we don’t move her she will die out here!”
“But you might paralyse her if we move her! Rubén, you have to get to the end of the driveway, to flag down the ambulance. They will be at least twenty minutes. Cayetano, don’t worry, Alicia is still up the hillside with the children.”
Cayetano rolled Luna with care onto her back. Jorge looked desperate to step in and help, but Cayetano didn’t want a single hand placed on her. He had to pick her up, she couldn’t die here. Luna’s body let out nothing more than a forlorn and despondent gasp for air. His preciosa was dying.
“I’m with you, estoy contigo, I’m with you.” Cayetano whispered to Luna as she lay limp in his arms. He had to make a decision in a split second. He lifted her from the ground, her body lifeless in his arms. Luna’s broken limb dangled from her body, splattered in her own blood. The walk to the house was not an easy trek, but at least downhill. Cayetano had never found his footing; the rocky outcrop of Escondrijo tripped him every time he was out on the mountain. But not today. Today was the day he would perfect hiking and cope. Jorge ran alongside him, holding Luna’s neck parallel with her back, but with the terrain and the trees, he had to let go at times. Cayetano had Luna’s bloodied face mashed against his shirt, and hoped he didn’t bump her too much as he moved down the hillside. He was paranoid that she would start to go cold in his arms. At this point, he had no way of knowing if Luna was still alive.
Heading into the clearing where the almonds grew, with the house now in view, Cayetano was dizzy with the panic. “I’m with you,” he said to Luna. The mountain had enough dead; it couldn’t take another life.
Time became lost in the wind blowing around the lifeless masía as Cayetano fell to his knees just outside the front door. He cried out in pain and helplessness as he placed Luna on the dirt. His resolve was broken. His heart was broken. Cayetano didn’t have a single ounce of strength left, he just wanted to curl up and die there next to her. He looked at Luna’s face hard against him. Even with all the blood, he noticed that she was blue around the lips. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It was hard to tell if her chest inflated at all. He rested his cheek against her forehead, and closed his eyes for a moment as he caught his breath. His whole body was on fire with pain, and the sounds of the world became muffled again.
“That’s Mummy!” Enzo cried. “She’s bleeding!”
“I want my Mummy!” Giacomo cried, little tears filling his eyes. “I want my Mummy!”
Cayetano looked up, aware dust smudged with tears and blood covered his face. Alicia had brought them down the easy path back to the house.
“Take them away!” Cayetano cried through his breathlessness. “Anywhere but here!” He closed his eyes for a second; between the heavy wind, the pounding of his heart and the crying of the boys, concentration was impossible.
Giacomo’s face had gone white. “Is she dead? Is Mummy dead?”
Cayetano looked up from Luna, to see her sons look back at him. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He had lost his voice.
“You promised you would take care of us!” Enzo cried. “You promised and you didn’t look after Mummy!”
Rubén came running around the side of the house, two ambulance officers with him. As soon as they laid eyes on the scene, Cayetano knew what they were thinking. It didn’t get any worse than this.
“Cayetano?” one paramedic asked. The eyes of the man in his late thirties took everything in, but he needed Cayetano’s help first. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“She… she fell,” he managed to croak.
“Okay, what’s her name?” the man asked as he pulled up one of her eyelids. Her ice-blue eyes rolled back, no response of any kind. Cayetano glanced up to see Jorge pointing out the ridge to the other paramedic. She must have tumbled fifty feet down the steep hillside. Alicia had taken the kids over to Luna’s unlocked car and had sat them on the back seat. They were bawling to a complete stranger; Luna would hate that.
“Cayetano, what’s her name?”
“Luna,” he whispered.
“She’s your wife?”
Cayetano nodded. “We’re getting married. We have two little boys.”
“Okay, Cayetano,” he said as he checked her pulse. “We are going to take her to Valencia.” He needed to take it easy, the dusty man before him was in a state. They were going to have to treat him too, probably for shock. “You moved her from the accident site?”
“I had to,” he mumbled. “It’s a long way from here.”
“It’s all right.” He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “Can you tell me what position she was in when you found her?”
“Ahh…”
“Face down, or on her back?”
“Face down.”
The other paramedic sat down next to his colleague, and they shared a look. A cold look. “Blood pressure is 70/40. We have to move.”
“She has low blood pressure all the time, she told me once,” Cayetano said, and watched them open a whopping case. His eyes widened when they pulled out a huge needle. “What are you doing?”
“Her lungs are punctured, Cayetano. We are going to re-inflate one, by putting this needle between her third and fourth rib, and into the lung. It’s painful, but she can get air. Once she’s stable, we will do the other one.”
“Luna doesn’t like going to the doctor. She won’t like it.”
“Cayetano,” the other man said, and placed one hand on his shoulder. His colleague pulled Luna’s shirt up and steadied the needle over her bloody chest. “Luna is unconscious and won’t feel anything. We must do this before we can move her.”
Cayetano shut his eyes the moment he saw the guy jab her. This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. “Cayetano,” the paramedic said to gain his attention, “Cayetano, we need your help.” He opened his eyes to see he had removed the needle again. “Cayetano, has she ever been intubated? A tube down her throat?”
“I… I don’t know.”
“Okay, we need to put a tube into her. Because Luna has been unconscious for over twenty minutes, her muscles have relaxed too much for her body breathe on its own. We have what is called a laryngoscope handle…” He pulled out the device that stunned Cayetano. It looked like a sickle used out in wheat fields. “We insert this, open her throat and feed the tube into her lungs. Now, it does have a minor risk, particularly with infection out here. But I don’t think she can handle breathing on her own for much longer. She isn’t getting enough oxygen, and until we get her breathing, we can’t treat her injuries.”
�
��Anything,” Cayetano said. “Please, do anything. Everything!”
He watched as Luna’s little mouth got pulled open by this awful plastic handle and pushed far down into her body. He half expected her to wake her in a panic, but no miracles ever happened at Escondrijo. Cayetano had his hands over his mouth, not breathing himself as he watched the men perform the procedure. He took his hands from his face and saw Luna’s blood on his fingers.
The whole thing moved in slow motion. The staff didn’t look worried, but Cayetano was on the edge of collapse with terror. He looked at over the car a few times to see the boys sitting in the back seat, crying as they witnessed the scene. This would haunt their little dreams. It seemed like hours by the time they had Luna’s neck in a brace and tied to the stretcher.
“Cayetano,” the paramedic said, his voice still calm. “Are you coming in the ambulance?”
What would Luna do? What would she say? She would want the children cared for before herself. She would fear for their safety if they were with strangers. “I have two boys with me…”
“Can your friends care for them?”
“No, no they can’t. I need to drive them back to the city…”
“You can’t drive, not in your state.”
Cayetano’s chin started to quiver. There was no way he would hold it together much longer. Luna would be livid if she knew he abandoned the boys, but she might die alone if he didn’t.
Over the noise of wind, Cayetano turned to the sound of a car on the crunchy limestone. He recognised the black Audi; he had passed it on the road out of Serra, parked not far from the entrance to the private road up to Escondrijo. Darren burst from behind the wheel and ran over to the scene. “Shit!” he cried. “I saw an ambulance go past and worried it might be here. What happened?”
Cayetano didn’t find any words, but the moment Darren saw Luna on the stretcher as they opened the back doors to the ambulance, the situation said everything. Darren opened to his mouth to speak, but said nothing. Instead his eyes went in the direction of the boys over in the car.
“I don’t know what to do!” Cayetano cried. Everyone stood nearby, filthy and confused by the panicked moment.
Secrets of Spain Trilogy Page 72