by Phoebe Conn
She bit into a cracker. It tasted like cardboard, and she washed it down with a sip of ginger ale. The bubbles tickled her nose. “You saw Rafael out at the ranch. Did he look weak to you?”
“What do you mean? Not up to the challenge of a bullfight?”
“Yes.”
“No.” He took a large forkful of baked chicken. “Why didn’t you watch the video if you’re so curious?”
She gave up on the cracker and tasted the cream of chicken soup. It was smooth and delicious. “I can’t bear to watch him face a bull. If he were gored, I’d never forget it.”
He nodded as he chewed another mouthful. “What, the sight of it or losing him?”
She gulped her ginger ale. “Both.”
“Guys get tossed in the air all the time. Sometimes all the bull caught was the seat of their pants and they get up and come right back at the bull. Check the bullfighting videos on YouTube.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, there are dozens of them.”
“Lord help us.”
He paused with his fork halfway to his mouth. “What are you doing with a matador if you can’t stomach a bullfight?”
“That’s an excellent question, but the man sure can dance.”
He looked at her askance. “Was it love at first sight?”
She shook her head. “No, not at all.” She had noticed Rafael’s scent, though, but no one ever said they fell in love with their nose.
He wiped his plate clean with the last bite of a roll. “Tomas has some lemon sorbet. Do you want some?”
She swallowed another spoonful of soup. “Thank you, but I think I’ll pass.”
Fox stood and then hesitated and returned to his chair. “Dr. Moreno usually doesn’t say more to me than good morning, but today he asked when I’m going back to school. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“Odd how?”
“It could have been a warning that Miguel might not have much time left. It was the way he said it; maybe he was warning me not to go.”
“Could be, but we know Miguel’s not well, and that he won’t get better. Do you have other family?”
“No, the Aragons are it.”
She assumed her father had provided for Fox in his will, or he might have a trust from his mother’s estate, but he was much too young to be on his own. “I’ve changed my mind. Will you bring me some of the sorbet?”
“Sure I will.”
Once he was gone, she realized how little she’d considered the sad situation the rest of her father’s family faced. This was probably her only stay in their world, and she could imagine what it would be like without Miguel to hold it together. Vida Ramos’s two children could depend on her. The twins had their mother. She and Santos were grown, but Fox had the barest tie to the Aragon family, and Carmen and Cirilda were unlikely to do more than buy him an airline ticket back to school.
He had warmed to her, though, and she wouldn’t abandon him to a sterile boarding school. An English boy would be popular at Catalina Foothills, but he would be a most unusual souvenir from her summer vacation. So would a dashing matador, and she could envision Craig’s baffled disapproval. Thinking of him, she had a ready smile when Fox returned with the best sorbet she’d ever eaten.
“This is tart without being too sharp,” he mused as a food critic would. “I like the sprig of peppermint too. Presentation is everything in a dessert, don’t you agree?”
“I do, although a piece of chocolate cake on a paper plate has enormous appeal.”
He nodded and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “What do you suppose will be in Augustín’s missing memoir?”
She answered just as quietly. “It’s no longer missing, but I’m hoping for some honest comments about his home and family.”
“I can’t imagine Carmen ever being young and pretty.”
“I’m just as sure she was, whether or not you can visualize it.”
“Are you keeping a journal?” he asked.
She waited for a spoonful of sorbet to melt in her mouth. “I was, but somehow life has gotten ahead of me. What about you?”
“I started one once, even made up a code so my schoolmates couldn’t snatch it away from me and read it aloud. I lost interest after a while. You feel well enough now to go downstairs and watch a movie?”
He was looking down at his empty bowl as though her answer didn’t matter that much to him, but his shy glance proved otherwise. “Yes, let’s do that.”
He went downstairs to make certain Carmen and Cirilda had left the dining room and gone to their rooms before she joined him in the den. The sofa was cloud-soft, and she sank into her seat and pretended to watch a film she could not have described later as being a crime thriller or a space adventure. It passed two hours of time, however, and she was grateful for a mindless reprieve.
Sunday morning, Maggie woke up early, put on her bikini and went down to the beach to swim. The days were gathering heat building toward their summer highs, but the water was still cool. She swam out and then horizontal to the coast. The Costa Daurada was such a beautiful sparkling place, but all she wanted to do was swim past her fears.
When she grew tired long before that happened, she swam to the shore to find Fox and Rafael waiting for her.
Rafael handed her a towel. “You shouldn’t swim alone.”
“There are lots of people in the water.” She flipped her hair out of her eyes and wrapped herself in the towel.
His frown didn’t lift. “True, but they’re not looking out for you.”
“I’m out now,” she exclaimed. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
Fox backed away. “I know where this is leading. I’ll see you later.”
She turned toward the sea, and Rafael moved close and draped his arm around her shoulders. “I want you to come to the corrida.”
His closeness felt so good, but his request made her heart fall with a silent splat. If they never had to get out of bed, they’d do fine, but reality yanked the covers right off them. “Young men recognize you here on the beach. There will be plenty of people there to see you.”
His voice dropped to a seductive hush. “You’re the one I want.”
Savoring his words, she leaned against him. He behaved as though desire was all that mattered. She nearly suffocated on desire when he was near, but what he wanted and what she needed were too entirely different things. “It isn’t that I don’t care, I do. I hope you won’t think it’s disloyal of me not to go, but please, I couldn’t bear to watch. I know you’ll dazzle everyone there.”
“Thank you, but I still want you to come.”
She slid her arm around his waist and unable to describe how frightened she was for him, she couldn’t put that level of terror into words. “I won’t ask you to stop, so please don’t ask me to go.”
She held her breath, praying he’d understand, but when he gave her a last hug and walked away, it was clear he didn’t. She wanted to call him back, but she couldn’t promise the only thing he’d ever asked of her. He wanted to show off for her. She understood his pride, but she couldn’t bear to watch him risk his life as afternoon entertainment for a bloodthirsty crowd. Tears rolled down her cheeks. If she lost him that afternoon, she’d never stop crying.
Chapter Fifteen
Carmen met Maggie as she returned to her room. Dressed in a black suit, she wore her usual stern, disapproving frown. “Even if you aren’t Catholic, you should come to church with us and pray for Santos.”
Her grandmother knew she cared for Rafael, but clearly wouldn’t include a Gypsy in her prayers. “Thank you, but I really don’t feel up to it, and my prayers will go just as far if spoken here.”
“If you know any,” her grandmother murmured and marched down the hall toward the stairs.
Maggie closed her door and leaned back against it. She only had today to survive, and tomorrow she’d make a reservation for the first flight out of Barcelona to the States. Maybe it was better th
is way. If Rafael wasn’t speaking to her, she didn’t have to worry about how she’d tell him good-bye without crying so hard she’d make a fool of herself. She’d just disappear from his life before he’d begun to miss her.
She topped her bikini with cropped jeans and her lavender shirt and took a fresh towel down to the beach. She carried the last of the books she’d brought along to read and intended to stay on the beach until late afternoon. There were shady places to sit so she wouldn’t be burned to a crisp, but what she really intended was to hide until a few minutes before five o’clock when the bullfights would begin. She wanted to see Rafael walk into the Plaça de Toros with the others and pretend he was waving to her. Spanish men were a handsome lot, but he would surely be the best looking, with Santos a close second. Her stomach was already clenched in a tight fist, and she still had hours to go.
She showered and changed into her colorful skirt with a low-necked black top and went to her father’s room at a quarter to five. He was awake, stretched out on his bed, leaning against a mountain of pillows and eager for the corrida to begin. He welcomed her with a wide smile.
“I thought you might have changed your mind and gone with my mother, Cirilda and Fox.”
“I’d rather watch as much as I can from here. You appear to be feeling well.”
“Yes, I am, but Antonio insisted upon having a private ambulance here. He’s afraid should Santos be hurt, I might risk driving myself to the hospital.”
“There’s an ambulance here?”
“Yes, parked in the driveway. The men with it will spend the evening watching the television in the lounge downstairs with Fernanda. At least, I think she’s here today. After a while, the nurses are difficult to tell apart.”
The television was set on the cable channel showing the bullfights, and Maggie silently counted down the minutes. “How many fights will there be?”
“Eight rather than the usual six, because Rafael has joined the other three matadors. Each man will fight two bulls.”
She had to swallow hard. “Two?”
“The fights are only fifteen minutes long, Magdalena. There are three five-minute parts, or tercios. In the first, the tercio de varas, you’ll see the matador mock the bull with his cape, and the picadores will weaken the bull’s shoulder muscles with their lances. During the tercio de banderillas, the banderilleros set their barbed darts, and in the final tercio de muleta, the matador returns to make the kill. It goes by very quickly. You’ll see.”
She’d eagerly studied the sequence as a child, which appalled her now. “All I want to see is Rafael and Santos enter the arena.”
“Take the chair close to me. It’s almost time.”
She recognized the trumpet fanfares, but the music was swiftly muted by the crowd’s frenzied roar. Filled with equal parts of excitement and dread, she couldn’t bear to watch more than the opening parade. The cameras were facing the matadors, banderilleros and picadores as they marched and rode in. Santos had worn red, and she recognized him instantly. He came in alongside the other two matadors who were in blue and purple, and Rafael, in his menacing black, strode in right behind them. The cheers grew louder as the crowd recognized him.
“He was very popular in Mexico,” her father murmured. “Let’s see if he can live up to it here.”
There were thousands there, so Rafael wouldn’t know if she were present or not, but she was truly torn to have disappointed him so badly. She left the easy chair meant for visitors and took a seat at the balcony table. “This is close enough for me.”
“If you insist.”
“Yes, I do.” She sat with her hands tightly clasped in her lap. The two matadors she didn’t recognize were first and second and while her father criticized their work with an occasional comment, they left the bullring without injury. Then Santos entered the ring, and the crowd went wild.
“How can you stand this?” she asked.
“It’s in our blood, querida. It’s a grand ritual, an elaborate sacrifice, perhaps our true religion.”
She could accept that Spain had a rich culture with a couple of centuries of the bloody spectacle now broadcast on cable for the world to see. However, history was a sorry justification in her view. She didn’t care if the bulls had enjoyed four placid years before their final tormented afternoon either. She still felt sorry for the lumbering beasts and sickened such huge crowds would gather to see men risk their lives for their amusement. She’d never share in their appalling thrill.
“Come watch a moment of Santos. He’s the best of the lot.”
She stood at the end of his bed and hugged the bedpost tightly. Santos had an agile step and moved so quickly the bull streaked by his cape again and again without coming near enough to do him any harm. She made her way back to her chair.
“Yes, he’s wonderful. I can see that.”
“Now you’ll have to watch Rafael so you can compare them.”
She was already so sick at heart, she doubted she could feel any worse, but after Santos made a quick and clean kill, she lacked the energy to stand and had to sit on the foot of her father’s bed to watch Rafael.
Santos had played to the crowd, but Rafael faced his bull as though they were the only two at the arena. She understood how well he’d absorbed Augustín’s lessons, but her father appeared perplexed.
“He’s showing us more than he did in the ranch video,” he said.
Rafael’s height and lean build gave his every pose an elegant line, but she’d quickly seen enough and retreated to the balcony. She checked her watch. His first tercio was nearly finished, but it lengthened endlessly in her mind. Her father dropped his water glass, and she hurried around the bed to pick it up. Empty, no water had been spilled.
“He’s surprised me,” Miguel whispered.
She filled the glass from the pitcher on the night table and handed it to him. “How?”
“I expected too little of him.” He took a sip of water and his hand shook as he handed her the glass. “Life is all a matter of luck.” He closed his eyes to rest a moment before looking up at her. “There is still time for mine to change.”
“What do you mean?”
He waved her off, and she sat down, confused by why he would refer to his own luck rather than Rafael’s. Then a truly horrible thought occurred to her. She immediately discounted it, but the pieces fit together too neatly to be ignored. What he needed was a healthy heart. Santos had said their father doubted he’d be the same man with another man’s heart, but what if he were given a matador’s heart?
What if he’d done all he could to increase his odds of securing a heart as brave as his own?
She circled his bed and spoke softly. “Was Rafael supposed to die this afternoon so you could take his heart?” When he stared up at her, the shock of her question shone in his dark eyes, as did the damning truth. She wondered when it had begun. Was his initial reluctance to endorse Rafael merely an act? Had he counted on Rafael to have more strut than skill? Had Ana worked with him to pit Rafael and Santos against each other in the hope Rafael would take careless risks to outshine her brother? It all made such logical and horrific sense, as did having an ambulance ready to rush Miguel to the hospital for a transplant if the right heart became available. She glanced at the television screen and saw Rafael’s bull dead in the sand.
“How lucky do you feel today?” she asked. “Would you be happy to take Santos’s heart if Rafael survives the afternoon but your son doesn’t?”
Miguel shook his head, opened his mouth to speak, then had trouble catching his breath. He gasped and clutched his chest, and she knew she’d gone too far. She’d wanted the truth, not to kill him, and she dashed out into the hall to call Fernanda. The nurse came flying up the stairs followed by the paramedics from the ambulance. There was oxygen in her father’s closet and a defibrillator. Tomas and the men from the kitchen heard the commotion and hurried upstairs as did Mrs. Lopez. They filled the hallway and peered around each other’s heads for the best view,
while Maggie retreated to the balcony.
The paramedics worked on her father for several minutes, then one ran for a stretcher. When he returned, he shouted for the servants to clear the way, and he and his partner carried Miguel out to the ambulance.
Fernanda grabbed Maggie’s hand. “Come ride with us.” Maggie followed and sat with the driver while the nurse rode with the second paramedic in the back. It was a wild ride weaving through traffic, and frightened, she grabbed hold of the dashboard to remain steady in her seat. Once they’d reached the hospital’s emergency entrance, she was pushed aside and forgotten. Fear tightened her chest with a painful ache, and unable to sit, she paced by the waiting room windows. There were mothers with crying children waiting to be seen, and others with a variety of complaints who eyed her with curious glances. She owed no one an explanation, but her companions all sat forward to listen when Fernanda appeared, sobbing into her hands.
“He’s gone.” Despondent, the nurse threw herself into Maggie’s arms.
Maggie patted her back and helped her to a seat. Her father had been stricken and died in little more time than a bullfight tercio. Her question had killed him, surely it had. Stunned but unable to mourn, she sat with the distraught nurse, her eyes dry and her senses seared numb. She was the only one who knew the truth of what had happened, but she dared not tell a soul.
Dr. Moreno ushered Maggie and Fernanda into a private waiting room. “You mustn’t weep so, my dear. You were a fine nurse for Miguel. He knew how precarious his health was, but I’d hoped he’d have more time to tell everyone he loved good-bye.”
Maggie understood. Wasn’t that why she’d been summoned to Spain? Or had she been part of the plot to complicate Rafael’s life? That would mean they’d both been used in an attempt to extend her father’s life. The doctor regarded her with an odd gaze, perhaps because she showed no sign of loss. She couldn’t have conjured up a tear had she tried.
Half an hour passed before Carmen and Cirilda rushed into the room, with Fox trailing. They’d been called to the hospital as they’d left the corrida, but it wasn’t until Dr. Moreno began to offer his sympathy that they understood Miguel was dead.