And even if she confessed, a small voice inside him said, would he really expose her just to increase her circulation?
The thought must have showed on his face, because she raised an eyebrow. “I don’t dare ask you what you think of my writing.”
“I’m shocked, Miss Cruz. I thought you were impervious to criticism.”
“Not as much as you might think.” She smiled, but something about the way she said it made him think that she wasn’t as thick-skinned as she tried to appear. Unbidden, an image of her expression after Mendez’s barb came to his mind. No, Emilia wasn’t thick-skinned at all.
They were in front of La Tacita by then. Ruben stopped in front of the doors. “Could I persuade you to stop for a glass of tamarind juice before you go?” he asked, nodding to the marble-topped tables that had been arranged outside the cafe.
“I can’t. Luis and Susana are waiting for me and I’ll never hear the end of it if I’m late. You’d think those two had shares in a clock factory, the way they keep track of time,” she grumbled.
“Are you going on a frolic without me?”
“Not at all,” she said. “We’re sorting through some old books of Papa’s to see which ones can be donated to the book fair—he’s got hundreds and he hasn’t read most of them in years.”
“I’ll help,” he volunteered.
Emilia, instead of looking grateful at his offer, looked distinctly panicked. The expression was gone in an instant, but it lasted long enough to make Ruben wonder if she had somehow found out about his visit to the magazine—or, for one wild moment, if she knew who he was and what he was doing.
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she said. “It’ll be hot, dusty work—you’ll likely ruin your nice suit.”
“It’s no trouble at all. In fact, you’d be doing me a favor. My sister threatened to stop by the boarding house this afternoon and if I’m not there, she’s likely to go hunting for me all around town.”
“Why would you want to avoid her?”
“She’s trying to persuade me to go home and you can believe she’ll use any means necessary to do so, up to and including torture.”
“Is going home such a disagreeable prospect?”
“At the moment, it is,” he said, without adding an explanation. “So, you see, I really would prefer to spend a hot, dusty afternoon with friends than one with my sister.”
She hesitated, but he wouldn’t be dissuaded. He started to walk in the direction of her house and she had no choice but to fall into step beside him.
“So you’ll be selling your father’s books at the fair?”
“Well, Mrs. Espinosa has assigned us a booth. We thought that along with the books, we could sell some embroidery Susana’s working on and I—well, I’d thought to sell a few dozen jars of jelly, but I’m afraid that won’t happen after all.”
“I can’t imagine why not,” Ruben said, and managed to keep his face solemn.
“Well, I won’t win any prizes for my cooking, but at least I haven’t poisoned anyone. Yet,” she added. “I did have another idea. But we’re not sure how feasible it is.”
She began to explain her plan to compile a short book of local legends and stories and as she spoke, Ruben grew more and more interested.
“I have a friend who could help you. He’s a bookseller in Ciudad Real, and he has a small press. I’m sure he would be willing to print two or three dozen copies if we told him the profits are being donated to the library—he runs a literacy program and would be pleased to do what he could to help establish one here. I can wire him tomorrow if you like.”
He could also speak to Manuel about doing some illustrations for the interior, but he wouldn’t mention that until he’d had a chance to speak with him.
“Oh, would you?” Emilia’s entire face was transformed into an expression of delight and Ruben, to his dismay, was struck by the inconvenient but overwhelming urge to make her look like that over and over again.
Luis was climbing the steps to the Cruzes’s house when they arrived. The girls put them both to work immediately: first, carrying the crates from an unused bedroom at the back of the house to the front parlor; then, helping them dust the books with rags that grew filthy almost immediately and piling them into towers from which they’d select what stayed and what was donated.
They had only been working for half an hour when it became evident to Ruben that Emilia was trying to play matchmaker, like she had the day before. She had found one pretext after another to leave the room and though she tried to drag him along, he managed to stay put.
The more he thwarted her efforts, the more she fumed silently. Ruben would have laughed but he suspected if he did, it would result in his being either forcefully ejected from the house or knocked upside the head with one of the volumes at hand. So he continued to pretend ignorance while she grew more and more vexed.
Luis and Miss Cruz seemed to be oblivious to all goings-on. They were poring over the crates, their hands dusty and their clothes sporting streaks of grime, exclaiming as they unearthed the occasional treasure.
“These will be perfect for the literacy program,” Miss Cruz said, stacking a pile of early readers on a side table. The blue spines and yellow lettering reminded Ruben of a series he used to read as a child.
“You can’t give those away!” Emilia said, scrambling to her feet. “I loved those books. Those are the ones Luis used to give me.”
“Yes, and I’ll never forgive him for that. I spent months trying to talk you out of attempting to fly on wings made out of plantain leaves.”
“I still haven’t given up,” Emilia said, laughing along with Luis. “As long as I’m standing, I might as well get us something to drink. Mr. Torres, would you be kind enough as to help me chip some ice for our juice?”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get rid of me,” he said in a low voice as Luis and Miss Cruz began to reminisce over a tattered copy of Don Quijote.
“Whatever gave you that idea,” Emilia said dryly.
“It might be easier to continue trying to drown me.”
“Unfortunately, save from trying to do it in the bathtub, I don’t see how I could.” She thought for a second. “You wouldn’t do me the favor of sticking your head in the sink?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” he said placidly, swiping a rag over a copy of Suriel’s La Tentación de Marianela before handing it to Emilia so she could decide which pile it would go on.
She didn’t bother to hide her irritation. Ruben, on the other hand, thought it would be a good idea to conceal the smile tugging at his lips. Her dark brows had drawn together and her eyes looked like there should be thunderclouds gathering inside them. So Ruben, who had previously thought of himself as one of the men most unlikely to provoke a confrontation, said the one thing certain to make her even more infuriated. “Why are you so eager to compromise your sister’s reputation?”
“How dare you?” she said, with a creditable attempt at outrage.
He laughed. “Oh, give it up. You’re worse than an ambitious mother and obvious, besides. What are you planning? Do you think your sister has it in her to seduce Luis and then blackmail him into marriage?”
That plot wasn’t a stretch—it really had happened, the year before, and Luis had gotten through it by the skin of his teeth. He didn’t really think the Cruz girls were so mercenary but it was great fun watching Emilia’s expression go from annoyed to incensed. She calmed down with obvious effort, saying, “Only a cad would think that. All I want is to give them some time to themselves so they can get reacquainted.”
“What, exactly, do you think will happen if you’ll leave them alone for a few minutes? That they will fall into each other’s arms and Luis will be so overcome he’ll propose on the spot?”
She made an inarticulate noise in her throat that she might have meant as protest, but that Ruben took as assent. “You’ve been reading too many melodramas.”
Her gaze, wh
en she turned it to him, was flinty. “You needn’t think we’re like those predatory women who stalk men as if they were game and trap them into marriage. Especially when you’ve admitted you think it’s Luis who’s predatory. Which goes to show that you don’t know him at all.”
“Your sister and Luis have known each other for most of their lives. If he hasn’t said anything by now, what makes you think he ever will?”
“I don’t see how it’s any of your concern.”
Their heated whispers were cut short by Luis, as he remarked from the other side of the room, “I shudder to think what you two are conspiring about.”
Ruben looked up to see Miss Cruz had left the room. Luis was sitting on a crate with a book in his hands, watching Ruben and Emilia with a degree of puzzlement. Ruben supposed they did look rather conspiratorial, bent close together as they were, and they must have looked guilty springing apart as they did, so Ruben suspected Luis had got entirely the wrong idea. He tried to telegraph his denial but all he got in reply was a wide grin.
“Oh, we’re only plotting to take over the world,” Emilia said, placing a stack of books in the crowded bookcase behind them. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” Luis said, grinning.
“Oh, don’t encourage her,” Miss Cruz said as she came into the room with a tray full of glasses. She set it down on a side table and gestured for them to take a glass.
It was tamarind juice, cold and tart and rattling with pieces of ice. As he drank, Ruben flipped through an illustrated copy of Les Miserables he’d found. He had just come across a small square of yellowing stationary when Miss Cruz came to sit beside him on the sofa, her own glass clinking. He’d glanced down at the paper long enough to realize it was a poem but before he could tuck it back between the pages, she reached over and stilled his hand.
“That’s a poem Papa wrote for my mother. I haven’t seen it in years.” Ruben handed her the paper and she pored over it with obvious fondness, a faint smile on her lips. “It isn’t one of his best but I like it better than the others. You can read it if you like.”
It was true the poem was not one of his most technically proficient ones. Cruz had been known for his dizzying feats of literary gymnastics and this poem had none of the complexity that characterized his later work. It had a lively charm to it, however, and an unreserved, heartfelt candor that reminded him, unexpectedly, of some passages in The True Accounts.
“It’s beautiful,” he told Miss Cruz. “It’s clear how much he loved her.”
“I don’t think he ever stopped loving her, not even after she died. You’ll think me unbearably maudlin for saying so, but whatever happens in my life, I’ll be glad at least to have witnessed a romance like theirs.” She looked at him, cocking her head to the side, and something in his expression must have prompted her to ask, “Was it not so between your parents?”
Ruben shook his head. “They were affectionate with each other, but hardly the sort to go around declaring their everlasting love.” He was aware that from his tone, she might imagine he found the idea distasteful. The truth was he’d always thought there had been love between his parents. But after what he’d learned about his father, he was no longer sure. How could a man love a woman and do to her what Ruben’s father had done to his mother?
How could Luis profess to love a woman and then, mere months later, realize that he no longer loved her at all?
Chapter 6
Ruben’s sister had been in Arroyo Blanco for less than a week and already she had formed a fast friendship with Ana Maria Espinosa. The two of them had been inseparable ever since they’d arrived at the Vidal’s house earlier that evening, their conversation punctuated by laughter and the occasional exclamation as Violeta helped Ana Maria plan the decorations for the Espinosa’s booth at the book fair.
Faced with evidence that his sister was planning to stay for another four weeks, Ruben retreated towards the sideboard and poured himself a generous drink.
It wasn’t only that she was acting as their father’s agent, undoubtedly sending him reports of Ruben’s activities. It was the way her eyes had followed him that day at the theater, and later at the ice cream parlor, that made him think she saw more than he would have liked her to. There was nothing worse than to have her find him out—except, perhaps, her telling their father about his paper.
Resolutely turning away from her, he continued the conversation he’d been holding with Luis ever since the two of them left the Cruzes’s house the day before. “She’s a nice enough girl, Luis, but so were Miss Dominguez and Miss Perdomo, and look how that turned out.”
“I didn’t love Miss Dominguez and Miss Perdomo.” He saw Ruben’s expression and added hastily, “Not like I love Susana. I’ve known her all my life. I know her. She hasn’t any ghastly sharp-clawed cats or hulking, over-protective brothers or a passion for athletic clubs—I must have been sore for a month after trying to win over Miss Puello. Also, her scent doesn’t make me sneeze.” That last one had been Miss Ruiz. Luis had courted her for two miserable weeks, during which his nose had been rubbed almost raw by his handkerchief.
“You haven’t spent any length of time with her in seven years. How do you know she hasn’t developed a fondness for felines or tennis or bought a great bottle of lavender perfume?”
“She wouldn’t. She’s far too sensible to do any of those things.”
“If she were sensible, she wouldn’t be paying attention to the likes of you,” Ruben said, and Luis smiled. Aside from his penchant for falling in and out of love faster than a mango could drop from a tree, Luis, or so Ruben had been told by more than one woman, was the kind of man every mother dreamed of finding for her daughter. “Maybe what you need is to take some time away from her and really think about your intentions before you say anything you’ll regret. What do you say we head up to the city for a week or two? Or better yet, let’s write to Gustavo and ask if we can go up to his house in the mountains. It’s been a long time since we went fishing.”
“There’s perfectly good fishing to be had in Arroyo Blanco and anyway, I can’t leave. I promised Susana I’d help her decorate her and Emilia’s booth for the fair.” The musicians in the far corner started a new, livelier, song and Luis’s next words were almost lost in the racket. “To be honest, I was wondering if it wouldn’t be a better idea to stay in Arroyo Blanco once the summer is over.”
Ruben tried to keep his expression from betraying his surprise. “What about your position at your uncle’s bank?”
“I can find a job here easily enough. I’d be closer to my family, not to mention Susana.”
“You’re that serious about her.”
“I told you,” Luis said. “Things are different with Susana. I really, truly love her.”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Ruben said with a groan. But he had to wonder if Luis wasn’t right and this time it really was different. He was acting differently, at least. There was less bad poetry for one, and he hadn’t claimed once to have fallen to the depths of despair. In fact, Ruben realized, Luis looked happy. No doubt that was partly in due to the very excellent cognac he was drinking, Ruben thought wryly, but it was true that at least a fraction of that ease in his manner could be attributed to Miss Cruz.
Luis had wandered off to talk to someone whose name Ruben had forgotten and Ruben was pouring himself another drink when Violeta appeared at his side. He’d seen her in evening dress when they’d gone to the theater, but the sight of her in a long dress with upturned hair made him miss the beribboned girl he’d left behind. Especially when she said, the expression on her face unreadable as she twirled her wineglass by its stem, “I had a letter from Father this morning.”
Ruben returned the decanter to its spot on the tray, even though he was sorely tempted to drink from it instead of his glass. “And I suppose you’re going to tell me all about it.”
“I know you’re angry at him, but don’t you want to know how he’s been ge
tting along since you left?”
“Not particularly.”
“I know you think he sent me to spy on you but he didn’t, I swear. In fact, he didn’t know I was gone until I arrived here.”
“Then I wonder he hasn’t set out to drag you back.”
“He’s not the ogre you’re making him out to be.”
No, he was much worse, but Ruben didn’t tell her so. He didn’t plan on telling her anything, but before he could bite back the words, he found himself saying, “You wouldn’t think so if—”
He choked back the rest of it, but she finished his sentence. “If I knew why you left? How could I know unless you tell me?” She looked up at him with wide, beseeching eyes. “Tell me, Ruben. Tell me what happened.”
Ruben had never even considered telling Violeta the truth about their father. He looked at her now, wondering if she would defend their father so ardently if she knew everything he’d done, and felt the anger and resentment he thought he’d managed to push away beginning to flood him again.
“You two were so close. What happened to make you fall out?”
Maybe he owed it to her to tell her the truth. He’d promised his father he wouldn’t but what did breaking that promise matter when his father had broken more serious vows?
“It had to have been serious, I know that much. You wouldn’t have left over a simple disagreement.”
But did he want to tell her because he thought she deserved to know, or because it would cripple the blind adoration she obviously felt for their father?
“But whatever it was you did,” she continued, “I meant what I said the other day. Just come home. That’s all you need to do to get back into his good graces. You know he has a very forgiving nature.”
“Has it ever occurred to you maybe it was he who did something that needs forgiving?” Ruben looked around the Vidal’s crowded parlor. No one was standing near them, or even looking in their direction, but he took his sister by the elbow and drew her away from the lights and sounds of the party, into the empty dining room. Though there were electric lamps set in intervals all along the wall, the room was lit by the stripes of moonlight that filtered through the open drapes and fell diagonally on the mahogany table.
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