Raquel's Abel

by Leigh Barbour

I stepped closer to her. “You should call your family back in Ecuador.” Maria Elena had run from something for way too long.

  “No. When I needing them most, they betray me.” Her dark lips turned hard.

  “Listen.” I touched her arm. “Come sit with me for a minute.” I led her into the living room where it was a little quieter.

  She sat down on the couch beside me. “This room remind me of your grandmother too much.”

  I nodded slowly, trying to think of what to say to her. “Losing her made me very sad too, but you need to get on with your life.”

  She squirmed then shook her head. “You are very lucky you met your ghost.”

  I couldn’t help beaming when I thought of him.

  “You so in love, Señorita Raquel.”

  “Just Raquel. I don’t want the employees of the orphanage to hear you calling me that.”

  “Yeah,” she said and looked down at her hands.

  “I still think you should call your family. They are probably very worried about you after all these years.”

  “No, I write my cousin and she tell them where I am. They no want me.” A tear slid down her cheek that she hastily wiped away. “It no bother me though.”

  “Doesn’t bother you?” How could it not bother her?

  “Well, I having your grandmother and she make me feel so good. Now the children coming and I having family again.”

  “That’s not enough.” She had been a true friend to my grandmother and now I needed to be a friend to her. “You’ve been in this country a long time away from friends and family. You need more than your work.” Before I’d met Abel, I hadn’t had much else.

  She looked out the doorway to where the men were working. Some of them talked loud enough to hear them, but they spoke in Spanish so I had no idea what they were saying.

  “Sometimes I think of the father of my baby.” She glanced at me then looked down.

  “Yes, what was his name?”

  “Pedro.” Her hand moved to her breast then fell to her lap.

  “You should get in touch with him.” I nudged her.

  “No, what if he happy with another woman?”

  I thought for a second. “I know. Ask your cousin. She’ll know if he’s married.”

  “No, no. He no know my family.”

  “But she can ask around. It’s a small town down there, isn’t it?”

  “Si, a small town, but he from a different class. He from very poor family. Things down there, they no like here.”

  “And what if he’s still in love with you?”

  Her shoulders jumped as if she’d been bitten by something. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “You’ll never know if you don’t get in touch with him.” I raised my eyebrows at her.

  “And what if a woman answering and then I feel smaller than a worm.” Her eyes slid across and met mine. “Then I feeling worse.” She looked back down at her hands that ran up and down her thighs. “I leave alone the sleeping horses.”

  “I think that you need to get the answer to this question, Maria Elena, even if what you find out hurts.” I stood. It was time to go get Regina.

  I picked Regina up, and we headed over to the mausoleum.

  As I watched her walk to the car, it was like watching a completely different person. Her step was lively, as if she were enjoying life and not trying to impress everyone else with her stride.

  She sat next to me. “You wouldn’t believe how busy I am these days.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

  “The shop is doing well, then.” My chest swelled with pride. I loved hearing how well her life was going.

  “I have a few women that are having me do their entire wardrobe this year.” Her cheeks were round and glowing as she talked. “And, I even had a request to open up a shop on Southside.”

  “Are you?” Regina must really be good at this.

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I want to do. I want to dedicate myself to doing well in this one shop.”

  I was glad to hear she wasn’t going to spread herself too thin since she and Carter were in the middle of reconciling. Working too hard wouldn’t be good for their budding relationship.

  We were both silent as we passed the pillars that marked the entrance to the cemetery. Finally we were in front of the mausoleum.

  “I don’t understand all this.” Regina followed me to the doorway.

  I turned around with the key in my hand. “The last thing Grandmother said to me was that she wanted her ashes sprinkled over the Moscva River.”

  “Did you know about the jewels?” Regina looked right at me as the winter wind whipped around us.

  “Every now and then she’d say she had some jewelry, but I didn’t believe her.” I unlocked the two-story door and tugged it until it opened.

  “But does this mean that she was Anastasia Romanov?”

  I let my eyes adjust to the dim interior. “I don’t know.” I walked over to where Grandmother’s ashes were sitting in the opening beside Grandfather’s. Regina stood beside me and looked at the brass urn.

  “If she were Anastasia, then we are kin to the Romanovs.” Regina shook her head in amazement.

  “Not just the Romanovs, but Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles and other crowned heads of Europe.”

  “Royalty,” she whispered.

  “When I decided to sell the jewels, I insisted it be done anonymously.”

  “Why? Why would we want it to be a secret?”

  “Grandmother said Grandfather was insistent that no one learn who she was.”

  “Why? What could happen here?”

  “Remember, all those years no one knew. I don’t even think Father knew.” If he’d known something like that, he would have mentioned it.

  “Even he didn’t know?”

  “No. So that means that our grandparents didn’t want anyone to know. Grandmother only started talking about it when she was old and senile.”

  Wrinkles appeared across Regina’s brow. “In other words, they were very scared.”

  “And we don’t know how Grandmother got the jewels.”

  Regina began to giggle and soon, she was bent over in convulsions.

  “Have you forgotten where we are?” I looked around at Daddy and Mommy’s graves as Regina continued to laugh.

  “It’s just that I got this mental image of Grandmother being an international jewel thief.”

  I felt a chuckle start in my stomach.

  “Remember that movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones in the catsuit?”

  Looking up at what was left of Grandmother, my insides throbbed at the thought of her sneaking into castles and banks, stealing jewels.

  Then I remembered the sadder possibility. “Regina,” I said, not getting her attention. I laid my hand on her shoulder. “If Grandmother was Anastasia, she saw her entire family killed right in front of her eyes.”

  Regina stood up straight and stared at the urn.

  “And it would mean we were related to the Czars.” I remembered how I had refused to do a biography on Nicholas II because of his ineptitude. At that time, I had no idea there was a possibility he could be my great-grandfather. A shudder ran down my spine. My grandparents had wanted to bury this past.

  I turned to Regina. “I think that we should respect their wishes. There was a reason we were never told.”

  “Yes, if they wanted the world to know, they wouldn’t have kept it a secret for so many years.”

  “We just have to quench our curiosity.” I reached up and grabbed Grandmother’s urn with both hands and lowered it gently. I turned to Grandfather’s crypt. “You’re not here to ask so we are going to do what we think you would have wanted.”

  Regina and I walked back out to the car.

  I nestled Grandmother’s ashes in between us.

  “Who did you sell the jewels to?” Regina asked me as we pulled away.

  “Luckily, there were museums willing to pay a high price for the items.�
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  “I think that’s good. People will be able to see the things rather than having them locked up somewhere.” She absent-mindedly stroked the brass handles.

  “They were beautiful things,” I said out loud as I remembered the Fabergé eggs and the dark gold earrings and necklaces that were in the collection.

  “And soon you’ll be on your honeymoon.” She looked at me as I drove. “Are you all healed up?”

  I nodded. “Yes, I’m ready to go.” I felt myself give an uncontrollable grin.

  “And you’re still going to Moscow?”

  “Yes, and I’m going to do what Grandmother asked me to do. I’m going to stand on the bridge and dump her ashes into the river.”

  As I parked the car, I thought how satisfied I was that Regina was going to be happy. It had gotten even colder and I pulled my coat up around my neck as I dashed to the front door. I grinned at how easy it was to run these days.

  The door burst open and Maria Elena darted out barefooted, wearing a short-sleeve shirt and a pair of baggy pants. “I doing it,” she hollered so everyone in Richmond could hear.

  “What?” I couldn’t imagine what could be going on in the house for her to come charging out of the house like that.

  “What you say. I do it.” She did a little Salsa twirl on the stone drive.

  “It’s gotta be thirty degrees out here. You’re going to catch your death.” I held my arm out hoping she’d realize I was trying to get her to go back in the house. I was shivering, and I had a coat on.

  Her arms were flailing and most of what was coming out of her mouth was gibberish. “I do what you saying and he still loves me.”

  “Pedro? You called him?”

  She started to nod but soon her entire body was jumping up and down in the rhythm.

  “He still loves you?”

  “He saying he still think about me.” Her hands came together in front of her mouth as if praying and she began to spin around.

  “Come on.” If she stayed out here barefooted like that she would get sick. I opened the door and dragged her inside. “Tell me. What did he say?” I took my coat off and put it on the coat rack.

  “He say he still think about me and our little baby.” Her head dropped and her body drooped.

  “You can have another baby, Maria Elena.”

  Her face popped up and she smiled radiantly. “That what he say.” Her hands balled up into fists and she beat them up and down. “He coming!”

  I looked at her. “Coming?”

  “He taking a plane.” She closed her eyes. “I send him the money and he coming here.”

  “You already sent him money?”

  “What? You think I don’t having my own money? I do. I saving my money,” she said indignantly as if I’d just cut her to the quick.

  “I’m so happy for you.” I held my hands out to give her a hug, but she’d turned and was half way up the stairs before she turned around.

  “I needing to get ready, and you know, making myself beautiful.”

  I watched her skip up the stairs as if she were a child at play.

  A light tapping sound behind me told me Abel was approaching. A mild shiver ran up my spine as I thought how soon he’d be my husband.

  “You look like you’ve heard some good news.” He gave me a quick, but wet peck on the lips.

  From the second floor, we could hear Maria Elena singing.

  “She is very chipper.”

  “She certainly is. Her boyfriend’s coming from South America.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  I nodded. “They’ve been pining away for each other all these years.”

  Abel looked downward as if studying the floor.

  “Did that make you think of something?” I wrapped my arms around his waist.

  “It certainly does make me think of something.” He smiled and touched his nose to mine. “When you find that special someone, the one you were meant to be with forever, you have no option but to be patient and let that love come to fruition.”

  “I can’t wait for our honeymoon,” I mouthed between his light sweet kisses.

  The End

  http://leighbarbour.com

  Author Bio

  Leigh earned a Masters in English Linguistics at George Mason University (under the Title VII Bilingual grant) and a Bachelors in Geography from Radford University.

  Being fluent in Spanish, she won the prestigious Fulbright Fellows Award as an English Teaching Fellow. In 1994 she spent one year instructing teachers in Arequipa, Peru.

  Now Leigh and her husband live in Durham, North Carolina.

  Red Rose Publishing

  Dreams of Chimborazo

  Irina's Quest

  Raquel's Abel