Rosa stretched out her hand in the darkness to grasp Michael’s. Her hand was large and strong, her fingers damp and cold. The squeeze she gave him spoke eloquently of understanding and agreement. Of shame and forgiveness. Michael felt a rush of emotion and squeezed her hand in reply, sending her a silent message from brother to sister, that needed no words.
Gradually the howling wind quieted and the pattering of rain silenced. Looking out the hall window, Michael saw that the rain had at last stopped, that the swirling black clouds were moving out. Though there was neither moon nor stars to illuminate the dark sky, it was clear the worst was over. Someone would be coming after them soon.
“We made it,” he said to them, his voice hoarse and rough with fatigue. “We’re alive. That’s all that matters.”
“We got through this together. The Mondragons,” Rosa said, triumph audible even in her exhaustion.
Luis raised his head and met Michael’s gaze in the dim light. “No, we are not all together,” he replied soberly. “Mi hijo Roberto. He is not here. Or my wife.”
Michael tightened his lips. Tonight, his father appeared humbled. Laid low, like the rooster that had fallen in the sand.
“You were right to tell Manuel and Rosa to protect their children,” Luis continued in his low, gravelly voice. “I almost got you and Rosa killed with my stubbornness. I could have killed those bebés.”
His voice cracked and he shook his head. “What kind of father would put his family in danger? Abandon his child? Break his daughter’s heart? What kind of man?”
A week later the water had subsided and the families were allowed past the police barricades back onto their land. Michael, Luis and Marta drove in one car. Manuel and Rosa in another. They drove slowly across the mud strewn roads, a sad, defeated caravan, as the sun shone in a brilliant blue sky overhead. It seemed a mockery of the drenched and soggy earth below.
The nearby town was in ruins, the schools were ravaged, and it would take months to clear all the mud from the church. The pumping station had broken down and sent raw sewage spewing out, polluting every river in the county. Officials told the residents to disinfect everything, shampoo the rugs, wash the clothes and to boil anything that came in contact with their eyes or mouths.
It was hard to return to the nursery, to the house, to see all that they’d spent a lifetime in building destroyed in one night. No one said much as they walked around their ruined property, trying to determine what could be salvaged from the soggy masses littering their home and the fields. Everything inside and out was coated with a thick, gray, fur-like silt that stank to the heavens.
Marta, who had not been there during the flood and didn’t know what to expect, stood at the front door to her home, tears streaming down her face. All her beloved possessions—her mother’s clock, her photographs, her furniture—lay in ruins. The sofa was a mildewed lump on the front lawn.
Luis walked to the crest of the hill overlooking his beloved nursery and stopped, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders slumped. Rosa and Manuel followed him, flanking him on either side. Michael looked up from his work and saw them, a tableau of dejection, all slumped shoulders and bent heads. Laying down the sodden carpet he’d dragged from the house, he walked up the hill, placing one foot carefully ahead of the other as he traversed the slippery terrain. Reaching the top, he looked out over the nursery and saw what they saw. Acre after acre of rotting plants and marshy bog spread out before them. The nursery that he’d given up his architectural career for, that he’d spent the last four years building instead of skyscrapers, lay in desperate ruins at his feet.
Nature had stripped him bare. She had cheated him of any joy or satisfaction he might have felt at the end of this four-year rotation. It seemed to him as though she were mocking him and all his well laid plans. The Bible quote, Pride goeth before a fall, played in his mind.
Luis was devastated. He looked as though he’d aged ten years.
“I have seen this land, these plants, fail many times before,” he said in a low, somber voice that seemed to come from deep inside. “But always I found something I could save. Something, eh? But this…” He stretched out his callused, wrinkled hands, then bunched them into fists at the sky. “Why?” he called out to heaven, his heart breaking.
“Why did you have to take everything?”
“We’re bankrupt,” Rosa cried. “We have no stock left at all. Look! It’s all just lying in the fields. The trees, the shrubs, everything!”
“Everything,” Manuel agreed, walking to Rosa’s side and slinging his arm around her shoulder in an offer of comfort. Rosa was taller than Manuel, but she leaned over to rest her head against his.
Michael expected to feel the same despair, or at least a fiery rage. These emotions he would have welcomed as old friends. Instead, he felt neither. He found, oddly, that he took it philosophically. Nature was an unpredictable mistress. A few years back she withheld her water from them. Now, on a whim, she poured it over them, almost drowning them. They could bunch their fist at the sky and cry out for vengeance, or they could shrug their shoulders and begin building again. He’d tried it the first way. Now, a little older, a little wiser, and a little more tired, he decided he’d try the other. Besides, all the swearing and cursing he’d done in the past had done nothing but make him all the more tired. It hadn’t done a damn bit of good, as far as he could tell.
“My beautiful land,” Luis cried out, dropping to his knees. “Look at her. She is ruined. Fouled. Her stench is putrid. I am lost. We have nothing left.”
Michael walked to his father’s side and bent down on one knee. He scooped up the earth and held it in his hand. The soil was damp but loamy, cool to the touch. He closed his fingers tightly around it, gaining strength, then brought it to his nose and inhaled the pungent scent. His face broke into a wide grin of satisfaction.
“Look, Papa. This land is rich and fertile. Smell it.” He raised it to Luis’s nose.
Luis looked at him suspiciously, but took a quick smell. He grimaced and turned his head away. “It is sour, menso.”
“No.” Michael took hold of his arm and brought his attention back. His voice was low, but his hold was like iron. “I say it is sweet. Smell it again, Father. Close your eyes and think of the rows and rows of Mondragon stock, growing straight and strong. See the orchard in the springtime with blossoms bursting on the branches, hear the bees buzzing in the hives, the laughter of your grandchildren. Your family together. You and Mama, Roberto, Rosa and Manuel.” He paused. “And me. Now smell this soil again. This beautiful Mondragon soil.”
His father looked at him carefully, a gleam springing to life, before he closed his eyes and sniffed the soil in Michael’s palm. Then sniffed again, while Manuel and Rosa stepped closer, watching curiously. When Luis opened his eyes again, he stared back into Michael’s for a long time, his face intent and fierce. Tears sprang to his eyes, then, he dug down and grabbed a fistful of earth and raised it up to the sun.
“It does not smell bad. She is still sweet. Still beautiful. She is still ours!”
“Yes, it is Mondragon land. Our land,” Michael said, his own eyes filling. “It is beautiful. And we will rebuild our nursery here. We will rebuild our lives.”
He felt a rebirth kindle in his soul as he spoke. He knew he was speaking of far more than the nursery, or the land. He was speaking of a certain woman who had been ravaged by nature as certainly as this nursery had.
As he and the family worked to clean out the mud from the house, he felt a lightness in his heart that he’d not felt in many months. As he loaded the truck with curtains, clothes and other items to take out to clean, as he dug through the mud to find his mother’s sterling silver spoons, as he scraped layers of silt from the floors of the house, he felt as though he was scraping mud from his own heart.
Beneath the layers of anger, the hurt and the frustration, he found the glowing, lustrous kernel of truth: he loved Charlotte. It was that simple. There was no poi
nt in shaking his fist at the fates. He loved her, but he knew now that love was not enough. He had to act on his love. No hell, or no high water, would deter him from his goal.
Twenty-Four
It had been a long time since he’d driven the road to Charlotte’s house. He took the curves easily, remembering them well. It was a beautiful spring day, perfect, he thought with a chuckle, to encourage a young man’s fancy. In each cloud, he saw her face. In the color of the brilliant blue skies, he saw her eyes. As each mile passed, his conviction deepened. He would convince her that he loved her, no matter what. There would be no more veils between them. No innuendos, no more lies. Whatever fate dealt them, they could deal with it, as long as they were together.
He practiced the words he would tell her in his mind as he wound his way up the mountains. He would be plain. He would be direct. He would be honest. By the time he pulled up to her gate, he had it all straight in his mind. He rang the buzzer several times, impatiently. He’d already waited far too long.
“Who is it?” It was Melanie’s voice.
“It’s Michael Mondragon. I’m here to see Charlotte.”
There was a pause, and his hands tightened white on the steering wheel.
“Thank God!” came the reply.
The gates swung open and he drove on toward the house that he’d transformed. He’d designed it as a retreat for Charlotte, a haven for the two of them away from the pressures of the outside world. He viewed the landscaped Eden, terraced with planes of baby’s tears and brilliant bursts of flowers that changed with the seasons. White tulips were blooming now; soon, he knew, anemones would greet the summer.
The house, the garden, so much that they shared together here…seeing it gave him a shard of hope to cling to.
The front door swung open and Melanie almost threw herself upon him. He had to take a double look to make sure it was her. He hadn’t seen her for nearly a year, and she was as transformed as the house. It was more than her softer, rounder appearance, or the sheen to her light brown hair, or the pink in her cheeks. She had a bright-eyed, contented expression that contrasted with the sounds of worry and woe pouring from her lips.
“I knew you’d come,” she was blurting out, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and patting his back. The kitchen towel in her hand flapped in a wind redolent with the tantalizing scent of rosemary and garlic. “I just knew you’d come. But you sure took your sweet time about it!”
He strode past her into the house, his eyes scanning for Charlotte. “Where is she?”
Melanie trotted after him. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” He wheeled around at her. “Gone where?”
“To Chicago. Oh, Michael, I hope you’re not too late. You’ve got to stop her. He’ll kill her!”
Michael felt his heart slam into his throat. “What are you talking about? Who?”
“Freddy. Charlotte is getting sicker by the day. She almost collapsed at the Oscar party and she’s been hiding out here since then, not going anywhere. Not seeing anyone. Freddy hovers over her like a vulture. She won’t listen to me anymore. She only listens to Freddy. It’s like he’s got some kind of grip on her mind.”
Michael felt as though a knife had just entered his heart. He exhaled a long breath, feeling bleak, defeated. “Well, I see…” He struggled with something to say. “He is her fiancé….”
“No,” Melanie exclaimed, moving closer to take his hand. “That was all for publicity. Charlotte’s not going to marry him. Marry Freddy? You idiot! She loves you. Don’t you know that?”
Michael raised his eyes to Melanie’s and began breathing normally. In fact, his heart began skipping a bit. “Back up, back up. So, she’s not going to marry Freddy? Then why is she going to South America with him? The tabloids are calling it a honeymoon.”
“Exactly. It’s a smoke screen. Freddy’s lined up some fancy doctor there to take out the implants and put in new ones.”
“Put in new ones? I thought she couldn’t do that.”
“She can’t. But Freddy’s convinced her that this doctor in Brazil can, and she wants to believe it. She thinks her face is all she’s got left.”
“That’s ridiculous. She has so many other qualities. She…”
“She’s not herself,” Melanie interrupted angrily. “And if you’d told her about all those other qualities before, she might not be in this pickle right now.”
There was a silent impasse as her words hit their mark.
“I’m sorry, Michael. It’s just that I’m so worried. Charlotte knew Freddy was a manipulator. He used her, but she used him, too. She always knew when and where to draw the line. She had this ability to drop a wall down between her and Freddy that he couldn’t penetrate. But since you two broke up—” She paused, and the look she gave him was part accusatory and part despairing. “Now it’s like she’s given up. Michael, she’s killing herself. Or letting Freddy kill her. It doesn’t matter which. If she doesn’t remove the implants like her doctor says, she’ll die. If you saw her lately, you’d see it was already happening.”
She gave him a rough push on the shoulder. She was like a curvaceous bull terrier, protecting the hearth. “Why didn’t you come sooner? I waited by that damn phone for months watching her dwindle. Junichi and I spend more time in this house than we do in our own, because we’re afraid to leave her alone too long.” She jabbed his arm again. “What took you so long?”
Michael’s eyes flared and his chin stuck out defensively. “I came. That first night.”
Melanie’s eyes clouded with confusion. “You came here? When? I was here.”
“I doubt it,” he scoffed. “When I showed up, it was only Freddy. Charlotte was upstairs taking a bath. Her clothes and underwear were strewn all over the living room, wineglasses on the table. Freddy was half-naked. I didn’t need that bastard to explain the facts of life to me.” He turned his head, seeing that scene again in his mind, feeling again the same burn of anguish. “It hadn’t even been one night since she’d left my bed. It takes a long time to get over that.”
“Wait a minute,” Melanie said, holding her hand up.
“Just hold on here. Something’s not adding up. You walked in here the same night that Freddy brought Charlotte home?”
“Yes. After she told me the truth about her face, I went out walking.”
“You ditched her.”
He sighed and hung his hands on his hips. “Yes. It was a cowardly thing to do. I know that now, and I blame myself. I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t. She had months, years even, to come to terms with her transformation. I had two minutes. I’m not excusing myself. But hell, Melanie, I’m only human. I was angry and confused. When I came back, I found the ring on the table and I knew she’d left. The cabin was empty, I felt empty. So I followed her here.”
“Well, I was here that night, and nothing went on between Charlotte and Freddy, I can assure you of that.”
“What about the clothes? The wine. The scene was pretty clear.”
“I’m telling you, I was here with Junichi earlier that night. He left when Freddy brought Charlotte home. I must have been up in the bathroom with Charlotte when you arrived. Yeah, I remember now. Freddy was supposed to go home. Charlotte didn’t want to hear him tell her what to do just then, and I never do. So I told him to get out.”
She brought her unpolished fingernail to her puckered lips and tapped. “And now that I think of it, I remember being pissed off at Freddy for making a mess of Charlotte’s things. When I came downstairs, he was stuffing some of her clothes back into her suitcase. I thought it was pretty weird, but then again—” she rolled her eyes “—we’re talking about Freddy. He’s always had a thing about Charlotte.” She snorted. “In fact, I remember telling Charlotte what a creep he was. That he probably took one of her panties.”
“I can’t understand why she stays with that guy.”
“Don’t even go there. Charlotte can be very stubborn. And she has a thing about Freddy, too.
Not like a lover kind of thing. But there’s a connection there.”
He placed his hand on his forehead to collect his thoughts. “So Walen set me up.”
“Had to be. It would be just like him to mastermind the whole thing.”
He thought of the lost months, the pain and agony that they’d both endured. He’d been such a fool. Bobby was right, he’d been as unmoving as a Mayan statue.
“I’ve got to stop her.”
“I don’t know how. Freddy’s got everything arranged, down to the last detail. He’s not going to let anything or anyone get in his way—especially not you. He’s waited too long for this. I’m sure he thinks he’ll get Charlotte to marry him once she’s vulnerable in Brazil.”
“I’ll find a way. Tell me what you know. Any detail might be helpful.”
“Well…they’re in Chicago, staying at the Drake Hotel tonight. Then tomorrow she has a live television interview with Vicki Ray. Do you know her? She used to be the ‘Entertainment Tonight’ co-host. She has her own talk show now, and she’s had this thing about Charlotte for a long time. Always writes and talks about her. I think she senses that there’s something amiss there. So she’s been after Freddy for forever to get a private interview with Charlotte. Freddy thought that if Charlotte did this one big interview, they’d get all those nasty rumors about her health and drug addiction out of the way. Kind of a clean sweep. Then they could skip town for a while and get the surgery. He’s got Charlotte all prepped for the interview. Good ol’ Freddy likes to cover his bases.”
“When is it?”
“Tomorrow at two.”
“When do they leave Chicago?”
“They have tickets for a flight out to Brazil the same night. Michael, there’s no way Freddy is going to let you see her. He’s got her surrounded with bodyguards.”
Michael ground his teeth as he looked around the house. It suddenly struck him how much the place was like himself and Charlotte. Their love was the inspiration for the relationship between the bold, dramatic lines of the house and the lovely, soft curves of the garden. Think, Miguel, think, he ordered himself, pacing the floor. He was an architect. Creating designs was his milieu, and he was a master at his job. Surely he could figure out a plan. He could outmaneuver Freddy Walen. He carved a path on the kilim carpet while Melanie stood, arms crossed against her breast, watching in uncharacteristic silence.
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