“A cave-in. In the tunnel under the church. He, he asked me to tell you he was sorry.”
“Sorry?”
“For not being able to find Max, I think.”
She wiped tears away from her cheeks and chin. Clearing her throat, she said, “Thank you for telling me.”
“Patricia, I . . .”
“I’m okay. Really. Please, go.” She went to the door and held her hand on the knob. He turned to face her and the light showed her his face clearly for the first time. “My God, Miguel, what happened?” Her hands covered her own face. She wanted to reach out to his, but she wouldn’t know where to touch him and not reopen a cut or disturb a bandage.
“I was in the tunnel with Mainland. I tried to get him out, but a beam had caught him. When I went for help, there was another cave-in.”
“You, you’re okay?” she whispered.
Neither of them moved or spoke. Silence seemed to suck the air out of the room, the walls collapsing in the vacuum.
“Why, Patricia?” Miguel spoke and the room breathed.
She returned to the window, held the curtain back and studied the dim outline of the bell tower against the night sky. She had known the question was coming. An answer seemed as impossible to reach as the stars.
“Why did you not tell me about Max? About my son?”
“I was going to, that night at the hacienda,” she whispered. The words were her only defense. They were not enough, and he waited for more.
“I was afraid,” she said.
“Of what?”
She turned to him, her vision blurred by tears. It was as if she were talking to herself. “I was afraid that—I didn’t want you to hate me because of Max. Because you didn’t have your son.”
He covered the short distance to where she stood in one stride. His hand clasped hers that held the curtain with enough force to rattle the window. “I would NOT have hated you.”
She nodded, but it didn’t matter now. “I’m sorry. I should have told you that night,” she said calmly. His face was inches away. Even with the bandages and cuts, the lamplight honed his features into sharp angles and planes. He looked hard.
“No. You should not have told me then. You should have told me eighteen years ago!”
She pulled free from his grasp and walked as far away as the little room allowed. Not to escape. No. There was no reason to. She felt at peace, as if a balm flowed over her. Maybe that’s what happens, she thought, when one cuts deep enough. Her voice was distant, as if coming from far away. “That last night we were together in Virginia. We had a fight. When I left from where we met at Rock Creek Park, I knew you were going back to Mexico and I’d never see you again. I didn’t make it home. I—”
“I know,” he interrupted. “I waited for you until early morning. To say goodbye. I thought you stayed away because you did not want to see me, so I left.”
She shut her eyes and shook her head. “I drove away, crying. I didn’t see a truck that had stalled on the road. I swerved to miss it. And went down an embankment. It was the next afternoon before someone spotted the car. I, I was in the hospital for a while.”
She heard him take in a deep breath, but she kept talking, afraid to stop now that she had begun. “Later, Tomas told me you had gone back to Mexico. He said you had died in the student riots before the Olympics. He was there when the doctor told me I was pregnant. He offered to marry me. Give my child his name, his home. For all his sins, I can truly say he treated Max as his own.”
The window sash dropped like a guillotine. Miguel slammed his palm against the frame a second time. “Bastard! He knew I was in prison. He could have had me released. I spent three years in that hell, hating him. And you.” He kept his back to her.
She sat down on the bed and crossed her breasts with her arms as if holding in the sadness that filled her. Over the years after she had learned Miguel was alive, she hadn’t considered that he had suffered, too.
She cried for everybody she knew. Loud, suffering wails. They had all been wronged. Life wasn’t just unfair, it was mean. And she had deserved the worst of it.
Her breath was crushed out of her. She didn’t know for a moment that it was Miguel’s arms holding hers tightly to her chest.
“Damn Tomas, and Jim, and my father. And me!” She sobbed against his shoulder. “I’ve messed everything up. Everything.” Her body heaved. When she had quieted down to hiccups, Miguel kissed her forehead.
“I do not ever want to hear you say that again. Not as long as we live. Understand?” He drew away from her and held his hands to her cheeks, smoothing tears away with his thumbs. He scanned her face, as if reading every curve, every line. “Te amo, cariña. Perhaps I have loved you without ceasing. How else could my heart still know how to beat?”
“Can you ever forgive me?”
“Only if I know I am forgiven,” he smiled. His eyes twinkled in the lamplight.
“And Max? Will he forgive either of us?”
“Yes. Max will be fine. Your amiga Rachel has been talking to him. You must have her do your negotiations for you always. She could tell the miners that rocks have cervaza, and they would attack the mountain with their pick in one hand and a glass in the other.”
Her laugh caught on one forgotten sob. “She has always tried to get me to let my secrets go.”
“This Rachel is a very intelligent woman,” he smiled.
“But what will I be without them? They’ve always held me together.”
“They do not hold you together. They hold others out.”
She barely heard the knock. While she wiped her face, Miguel opened the door.
A young boy stood in the hallway. “El doctor de Cedral es aqui, Señor.”
“Come,” Miguel said to her. “The doctor is here. We will hear about Daniel.”
They went down a flight of stairs half-blocked with flower pots and crossed a patio to a ground floor room. Outside stood a man with a stethoscope around his neck. A woman in white marked with blotches of blood stood in the doorway.
Miguel knew them both. They talked in low tones, then he turned to Patricia. “Dr. Cabrera has removed the bullet.”
“Is Daniel going to be okay?” Patricia held her breath.
“San. Francis smiles on him,” Dr. Cabrera said, nodding.
“Can I see him?” she asked. She had no idea what she would say to Daniel, except to thank him. That was a beginning. She knew that was one more thing she had not told Miguel, but Daniel’s true identity was not just her secret to share.
Two bright lamps that had obviously served as operating lights were dimmed now by red cloths drooped over their shades. The eerie glow cast a bloody shadow across Daniel’s still form.
Patricia touched his hand. His eyes opened. He looked at her, then past her. His lips quivered in a half-smile. She turned to face Rachel and Max who had come in behind her. She ached to go to her young son and cradle him, but Max was watching Daniel as if she were not there. Carmina stood on the other side of the bed, in the shadows.
Daniel’s hand moved beneath Patricia’s. Their eyes met. She studied his face. Not looking for her father’s image, but learning the features that she knew she loved and always would. “How can I ever thank you,” she whispered.
“Max has.” He was weak and his voice trembled. His eyes found Carmina and she took a step forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
He turned back to Patricia. “You must thank San. Francis.”
“Yes, he is a miracle worker,” she whispered.
His hand gripped hers. She felt the sharp cold press of metal against her skin and looked down. In his palm lay a little silver boy, a milagro.
“Give this to San. Francis,” he said.
She hesitated, then drew her finger across the tiny amulet. “I left one in the church. And he did give me back my son.” She smiled at Max, then looked back at Daniel.
He raised his hand and dropped the silver piece in her palm. “You owe him one more.”
EPILOGUE
Six Weeks Later
A rose-spiced breeze blew cool across a hammock outside an adobe house in Cuernavaca. The ropes tying the woven net to concrete pillars groaned in protest. Miguel pushed his toes against the terrazo floor and launched himself into a high arc. His dark hair blew back and forth. He had just been swimming and the air cooled his wet bathing suit and bare chest.
“Mind if I join you?” Patricia slipped off her sandals and worked her way into the narrow space beside him. Her white shorts and tank top showed off the beginnings of a Mexican tan. It was cooler in Cuernavaca than it was in Acapulco or Mexico City. So here, at least, she could wear her hair down and not be miserable. As she settled onto Miguel’s arm, he twirled his fingers through the long, dark strands.
“Guess we need a matrimonial size hammock now,” he said and kissed the top of her head.
She made a soft sound of agreement.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“More telephone conferences. The agreement with the miners is ready to sign. The corporation we set up to pay for the safety measures and to start the handover is operational. They want us to come to Real for a celebration, but that might be hard to do.”
“Why?”
“Memories.”
“You do not have to give up the mines, you know.” He tightened his arm around her.
“Oh yes, it is the right thing to do.”
It had taken weeks to come up with a workable plan to give the town of Real de Catorce the mines. With no money to operate them, Patricia had to go one step farther to make it all work. She had to come up with the funding herself. Morelos Enterprises employed too many people to shut it down or bankrupt it, so prudent measures had to be mixed with righting the wrongs.
More important to her than giving up the mines was taking on the Morelos construction project in Tlantaloc. Catera was out of the picture. His helicopter had crashed just miles from Real. The shots General Ruiz fired had hit their mark. Miguel’s friend, the Secretary of Commerce, had finally spoken out publicly against Catera and was working to get rid of the Chief of Police and some of the other corrupt officials. In a time of the devalued peso, the government was trying hard to boost the economy, and Morelos Construction was being hailed as a godsend.
Things were slowly beginning to happen. Some of the pepenadores were moving back to Real to help in the mines. The garbage dumps would be moved to a site farther away from the city and low cost housing would be built in Tlantoloc. Miguel was taking charge, and Patricia felt nothing but relief.
Morelos Enterprises still demanded more of her than she wanted to give, so she had made Marco Cortina the new Director of Operations. When her thoughts went to Jim, she felt sad. Somehow she feared that the debt he was in and the secrecy of the Tlantoloc project went hand-in-hand with Max’s kidnapping. Whatever Jim’s responsibility, she knew he had tried to save Max at the end and had paid the ultimate price for his betrayal. She couldn’t be angry at him. What good would it do?
Patricia shifted to find a more comfortable place at Miguel’s side. “Where do you buy a matrimonial size hammock?” she asked.
“They are made in the Yucatan. Good place to go for a honeymoon,” he smiled.
She leaned back and studied his face. His dark eyes danced. “Are you sure?”
“Just try to change my mind,” he whispered, and kissed her so hard she thought she would melt through the spaces in the netting. Reluctantly, he released her at the sound of voices and laughter drifting over them.
Max was the loudest, splashes of water punctuating his voice. Gena squealed and screamed something in Spanish. Daniel, a calm
LINDA RAINWATER voice in the mix, refereed. He still wasn’t well enough to join the others in the pool, but he was doing much better than the doctors had predicted.
“You have made things right with Daniel, no?” Miguel asked. Patricia thought for a moment of the long talks she and her son had had. “I don’t know that things will ever be right. How do I make up for all the lost years? But, he is a forgiving person. He’s trying to understand. That’s enough for me now. More than I could ask of him.”
“Carmina was a good mother to him. She still has his heart. That is good.”
“I could never blame her. Oh, I guess I did at first, but I was just trying to absolve myself of guilt. She will always be his mother.”
“In a way, yes, but he has a new family now.” Miguel shifted and turned Patricia to face him. The hammock slowed, but neither seemed to notice. “Max seems happy.”
“I had a harder time with him than with Daniel. Hard-headed teenager. But, he loves Daniel. Saving his life got them off to a good start. And, now Max feels more secure with who he is, now that he knows where his liberal views come from.”
“It’ll take me awhile to work Tomas’s influence completely out of my son, but he shows promise. I think he is even a little proud of his scars,” he smiled and pulled Patricia to his side once more.
After a few minutes of silence, Patricia added, “Of course, Rachel helped me with both of them. She called today, fussing about Annie’s friends wanting her to tell ‘the story’ over again. Of course, Rachel’s loving it.” She sighed. “I miss her.”
“We all do,” Miguel said. “Is she coming for a visit?”
“Only if we take her places to wear all the new clothes she’s bought,” she laughed and settled deeper into Miguel’s arms.
He smiled and held her tight.
“And what about you. Are you happy, mi cariña?”
“Oh, just about,” she said slowly.
He raised up on his elbow and stared at her, a frown furrowing his brow. “Something is wrong?” he asked.
“Yes. Come on. I’ll show you,” she said, slipping out of the hammock. She took him by the hand and led him through the cool house to a back room, Miguel’s bedroom. Beautifully decorated, thanks to Carmina, with fine hand carved mahogany furniture. Chests, a desk, a dresser. And twin beds.
Patricia stood in the doorway, arms folded and nodded toward them. “Do they have matrimonial beds in Yucatan?”
Designed by: Junico Aranco
Corrections Done by: Allen Emperado
QA Done by: Anselma Ocon
Date: October 28, 2005
THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Page 31