by Ruth Wind
Teresa's photos surprised her. There were a predictable number of just-out-of-focus shots, and some off center or oddly composed. But there was a handful of photos that were excellent, including one shot of a doorway at the end of a hallway at the Martinez Hacienda that showed a promising sensitivity to light and shadow.
But it was her shots of Sarah and Eli that were most telling. Excited, Sarah printed an entire series of eight-by-tens. Over and over, the girl had caught the play of light and emotion on their faces. A coy glance, a surprised burst of laughter. One showed Sarah gazing off to something out of sight, and everything about her face – her mouth, her eyes, her hand lifting to brush blinding hair from her vision – expressed a wistful, aching yearning that was nearly painful to behold.
It took a very observant eye to catch such a piercing expression, to shoot the photo at the exact instant that all the elements fell together. And although Sarah suspected Teresa had been deliberately waiting for such moments in order to tell a story with a photo, it showed a rare eye.
She loved the picture on a personal level, and that amazed her, as well. Three days ago she would have been appalled to have seen such an expression on her face. Would have been terrified to admit she still felt those things for anything or anyone. Emotional distance had given her the only peace or safety she'd found these past twelve years.
Yesterday she had realized distance was impossible. It was also a lie. By nature she was a passionate person, one in love with a man, but also with the beauty of a morning sky. And it wasn't only love she felt strongly. She'd felt hate and sorrow and grief in such powerful portions she had believed herself doomed.
She clipped the picture to the line to dry, and started on her own work. As the varied images emerged, artistic and colorful and poignant, an idea began to grow in her mind.
Like a mystical wise woman in a fairy tale, Octavia had laid upon Sarah an almost impossible task. And like any heroine, Sarah had first protested that she could not possibly carry it out.
And perhaps she could not. Perhaps her quest was doomed, and none of them would find happiness. Perhaps another heroine, in a future time, would have to finish it.
One thing Sarah knew for sure: Octavia was right. Only Sarah herself had a prayer of bringing this long war to an end. Only she knew the main generals well enough. As insane as it seemed, her heart sang with the possibility that she might pull it off.
In the red-lighted room, she closed her eyes and prayed at random to the spirits of the past and to the generations still waiting in heaven for their turn. "Help me. Make me wise. Make me strong."
* * *
She made a quick lunch of soup and peanut butter crackers, sharing the leavings with the cat. "I guess you belong to me now, don't you?" she said to him. "What should I name you? You're not exactly a Fluffy or Tinker Bell type."
He regarded her steadily from big green eyes. Licked his lips as he eyed the cracker in her hand. She chuckled. "I never knew cats liked peanut butter. Or do you just like anything you can get?"
She put the cracker on the floor, peanut butter side up so he could lick it off, and petted his big head. "That's probably it. You've been hungry so long, you'll settle for anything."
With delicate laps, he made short work of the peanut butter. Sarah considered the problem of his name, but nothing came to her immediately.
When the phone rang, she got up to answer it, expecting Teresa. It was her father. "Sarah," he said gruffly. "I'm sorry I yelled at you last night."
She blinked. "You are?"
"Sometimes acting a certain way just gets to be a habit. Not a good habit, either. I just got going and couldn't stop." He cleared his throat. "Can we forget it?"
"I can. Apology accepted." She swung the phone cord in an arch, weighing her options, wondering if she dared. She did. "Will you try the tea anyway?"
He said nothing and Sarah could feel the resistance from him.
"Please, Dad? Just try it for a few days and see if it works. If it doesn't, nothing is lost. If it does, maybe you'll end up feeling a lot better."
"Well, how about if we make a deal?"
"What kind of deal?"
"You come over and get your mother off my neck. She hasn't spoken three words to me since last night."
Sarah thought of her idea and demurred. "I can't come till tomorrow afternoon, but why don't you put her on the phone, and I'll see what I can do."
"Deal. How much am I supposed to drink?"
"A tablespoon steeped in a cup of hot water every day."
"Can I put sugar in it?"
Sarah chuckled. "Sure."
"Here's your mother."
"Sarah?" Her mother sounded tired and querulous. "You don't have to do anything against your conscience on my account."
"He said he'll drink the tea, Mom. He met me more than halfway. I got over it."
"Oh, good."
"You need anything, Mom? Groceries or something?"
"No. The housekeeper comes in today, thanks to you." She sighed. "I'm just tired of the heat. I'll feel better when it's fall."
"I understand. Not long now."
They hung up, and Sarah stood by the phone for a long moment, a surge of optimism rising in her chest. If her father would come this far, maybe it wouldn't be as hard as she'd anticipated to find some common ground between him and Eli.
Maybe. All she could do was try.
* * *
Chapter 14
«^»
There were few people about in the library on such a hot, sunny day. Sarah approached the reference librarian behind her desk and told her what she wanted.
"Hmm," the woman said. She was a small, pretty black woman with her hair cut close to her head; her name tag read Glenna O'Neal. She pushed back from the desk and waved for Sarah to follow her. "That stuff is buried in the back. Some of it is on microfiche, but we have some bound copies of the newspaper all the way back to the first issue. Which would you prefer?"
"The bound copies, I think." They would feel more immediate.
The woman led her to a row of dusty, tall volumes. "Here they are. Do you know the year?"
"Yes, it was 1859." No Greenwood child – or Santiago, either, for that matter – could fail to have memorized that information.
"Here we go, then." She tugged the volume out and set it on a nearby table. "Are you writing a novel?"
"I probably could, but no. I'm Sarah Greenwood. My family has been at war with the Santiago family for more than a century over this and I decided I was tired of the legends and want to get the facts."
Glenna O'Neal's face brightened. "That's why you look familiar! I saw your picture in the paper last week."
"Yes."
"Are you really Juliet?"
"I hope not," Sarah said with a laugh. "She killed herself."
The woman laughed with her. "I guess you're right. If you need anything else, let me know."
"I will."
With a sense of excitement, Sarah opened the book and started leafing through the newspapers, crackling and brown. She found herself drifting, stopping to read an article here, another there. The world in which Emily Greenwood had lived was very different from the one Sarah had been born into. There were reports of "red Indian savages" attacking settlements in faraway places, and reports of the railroad being built. She read ads for patent medicines and herbal lozenges.
Bemused and seduced by the world of the past, she was startled when she turned the page to a paper dated September 1859, and saw a bold headline: Santiago Man Accused of Rape.
For one long second Sarah felt a powerful, intense sensation of déjà vu. It made her so dizzy she had to close her eyes and take several long deep breaths. When the feeling passed, she read the article. Told in nearly histrionic language, it detailed the story Sarah had heard over and over again, all of her life. From her grandparents and her father, and on the lips of sympathizers. Emily Greenwood had been brutally set upon and raped by Manuel Santiago. Emily's brothers
had dragged the man to the town square and demanded justice for their sister's honor. She'd been ruined and violated, and they would have justice.
As she read the familiar details, Sarah was transported to the Taos of those days. She imagined the square, smelling of dust and wind and sage, the cottonwoods glittering, the smell of horse and dung. In her mind's eye she saw Manuel Santiago, probably barely standing from the beating Emily's brothers had delivered. She wondered if he had protested his innocence. The story did not say.
The next paper, a week older, told the rest of the story. Santiago had been hanged. The same day, disgraced and humiliated, Emily Greenwood had been found in the barn, hanging from the hayloft. The family was despairing. In the last paragraph of the article there was a horrifying comment from one of the brothers. "Like any decent woman, she didn't want to bring that mixed-race bastard into the world. At least this way, she'll have some peace."
Sarah felt the world rock a little. She slumped back in her chair, staring sightlessly at the shelves.
Emily had been pregnant?
But how could they have known that, in the days before pregnancy tests, only a week after the rape?
Feeling winded, she stood up and carried the pages to the copy machine. Her heart and her thoughts seemed to move into a thready chaos – how had they known?
The only answer was that Emily Greenwood had been a lot more than a week pregnant. At the very least, she had missed a period or two – but why would she have shared that information if she planned to kill herself anyway?
Taking the copies from the tray, Sarah carried the book back to its place, trying to fit this bit of information into what she already knew.
She frowned, looking at the quote again. Maybe Emily's brother had only meant they were afraid she might be pregnant. No. The reference seemed to refer to a specific child – "that mixed-race bastard."
On the way out, she stopped at the desk. "Thank you, Ms. O'Neal."
"Did you find what you wanted?"
Sarah didn't know how to answer. "Maybe," she said. "I'm still missing some information. Is there a historian in town who might have specialized in Taos history? Someone who might know more?"
A decisive nod. "You should talk to Deborah Lucero." She pulled a Rolodex over and flipped through the cards, then copied the phone number down on a card she handed over to Sarah. "Good luck on not being Juliet," she said with a grin.
"Thanks."
The walk back to her cottage was brutally hot. By the time Sarah entered her swamp-cooled rooms, she was exhausted, and she fell onto the couch to rest for a few minutes before she called the historian.
Her mind whirled with images: the dusty square of 1859, the brothers dragging the Santiago boy to the sheriff. Manuel's face, bloody and bruised, which melded into Eli's face. A girl's slim body, hanging in the barn. A bright blue sky over the mountains.
She fell into a doze and dreamed of a gilded blue-and-gold world. As she walked through a grove of cottonwoods, she realized she could hear the Rio Grande, rushing through the canyon. Every leaf, every blade of grass, the thickly patterned tree trunks, all were edged with gold, like a fancy book she'd seen in a museum once, before they moved to Taos.
As if made from the light itself, a man walked out of the sunlight into the shadows, and Sarah's heart leapt so painfully she raised her hand to her chest, as if to hold it in place. The man was tall and slim, his hair long and caught back from his face in a leather thong. She rushed toward him, and when he caught sight of her, he ran to greet her, his face wreathed in a smile of joy.
They kissed, clumsily at first in their haste, then with more hunger and skill. And amid the gold-edged grasses, beneath the blue, blue Taos sky, they made love, flesh to flesh, alone in a secret world that belonged only to them.
Sarah jolted awake when the cat jumped onto her belly. Blinking at the odd dream, she glanced at the clock. She'd been asleep for only twenty minutes, but it had refreshed her. Teresa would be here any minute.
But she didn't move right away. Instead, she stroked the cat on her belly and wondered sleepily what if? What if the dream was more true than the legend? What if there had been no rape, only a forbidden love that ended in a classic Romeo-and-Juliet ending?
Pulling from her pocket the card Glenna O'Neal had given her, Sarah dialed the number. A woman answered in Spanish, which disoriented her for a moment. "Mrs. Lucero?"
"Yes. Can I help you?"
Sarah took a breath. "I was hoping I might be able to visit with you, Mrs. Lucero. The librarian told me you might be the only one with the information I'm looking for." She outlined her need.
"Sarah Greenwood?" the woman repeated.
"Yes."
"You may not like what I have found," she warned. "But if you want truth, I will be happy to give it to you."
Sarah took a breath. "I'm tired of the legends and the lies. I'd really like the truth."
"Come tonight, seven o'clock."
Teresa and Eli showed up a few minutes later. Eli was polite and distant, his expression cool. Sarah sighed as he took a magazine to a shady place on the porch and sat down, as impersonally as if he were at a dentist's office.
"Don't you want to see the pictures?" Sarah asked.
"No, thank you."
She rolled her eyes and waved Teresa into the cottage ahead of her, waiting until the girl was out of earshot to say, "You know, Eli, it doesn't have to be like this."
"No." His mouth was tight. "But you have made your choice."
"Why does it have to be a choice, Eli?"
His expression did not change, and he gave every appearance of ignoring her as he turned the pages of the magazine. She narrowed her eyes, feeling a surprising urge to slap him, to literally knock some sense into him. "I don't know you when you are like this," she said at last.
He raised his eyes. They were nearly black, luminous with powerful emotions. "You never saw this side of me, because it was formed by hatred and loss."
Sarah shook her head. This would lead nowhere except to an argument. "Suit yourself," she said, and went inside.
She and Teresa settled at the kitchen table and began to go through the shots of Teresa, deciding which to keep for the portfolio and which to set aside. In the end, the assembled photos in the keeper pile were a wide variation of poses and styles, from glamour queen to ingenue.
"I'll get these mounted and put in a book for you," Sarah said, making a neat pile. "Then we'll go on to the next step."
"Which is?"
"A trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe, to see if we can find an agency willing to take you on. Your mother will have to go, and she needs to understand what's involved Will she sit down and talk with me about it?"
Teresa looked down and shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. You could call her," she added hopefully.
Sarah decided this might very well be another stitch in the weaving of their families. "I'll do that.
"Now," she said, pulling the other stack of photos over, "I want to talk about something else, and I want you to really think about what I have to say before you object, okay?"
Teresa frowned suspiciously. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?"
"You might like it a lot. I don't know." She took the best of Teresa's shots from the top and spread them out before her. "These photos are amazingly good, Teresa. Have you ever worked with a camera before?"
"No, not really. Just one of those little things for vacations, you know. My teacher had one of my pictures from the Grand Canyon blown up to put in the yearbook, though."
"I'm not surprised." She pointed to the arched doorway at the Hacienda. "This is the one I noticed first. It shows a terrific eye for balance and light."
Teresa looked at it critically. "I saw it better through the camera," she said. "It doesn't look as good there. I should have got closer, maybe."
Sarah smiled, hearing the criticism of a natural. "That might have helped," she agreed mildly. She pulled out the series of Eli and Sa
rah, some separate, some together. She pointed out the one of Sarah, looking so obviously full of yearning, and another of Sarah and Eli together. "These two are…" She halted, wishing for some brand-new adjective to express fantastic, so Teresa would know she meant it. "They're just unbelievably good, Teresa. This one—" She pointed to Eli and Sarah together. The angle of Eli's head, the curve of his neck, the way his eyes focused on her lips, all spoke volumes of desire. Sarah's posture was more hesitant. With her hand, she brushed her hair away from the side of her face and neck that faced Eli, as if to reveal herself to him, and though her gaze was on his face, the angling away of her body, the slight turning of her shoulder showed her reluctance. "What do you see?"
Teresa grinned wickedly. "Girl, he wanted to kiss you bad. And you kind of wanted it, but weren't too sure." She lifted a wicked eyebrow. "I waited and waited until it was just right, and then – bam – there it was."
Sarah wanted to chortle aloud. She had not believed, looking at the pictures, that Teresa's shots had been accidental, but to hear she'd been waiting for the shot, that she had seen it when it appeared, was exactly what she had hoped. "Honey, you could be a model. You have the kind of face a camera loves, and you're a natural in front of it." She paused.
"But?"
Sarah tapped the photos. "But I have never seen such raw talent for photography. I think you're so good in front of the camera because you understand so well what makes a good picture, because of that inner eye."
"Really?" She pulled the pictures over, bent her head over them. "You're not just saying that to talk me out of being a model?"
"Modeling is a perfectly respectable career," Sarah said. "And you might love it for a long time, but sooner or later—"
"You get too old," Teresa interjected.
"Yes. I'd never presume to know what's best for anyone when it comes to picking a career. Only you can know that." She smiled. "But I've been a photographer for twenty years. I've poured everything I have, everything I am, into understanding it. I love it. It makes me whole. I'm also very, very good, Teresa." She paused for emphasis. "And your gift is so much bigger than mine that I even felt a twinge of envy when I looked at these pictures."