“Eh, we won’t say anything,” said Eugenia. “But mija, keep in mind he won’t be able to talk about the things he does for other people. It’s like seeing a doctor or a priest. Highly confidential. You only know about this because she’s telling you from her end. Don’t ever expect to hear anything through him. And don’t repeat it because people will assume you heard it from him, and it’ll make him look very bad.” She wagged her finger at me for emphasis.
“No, I understand.” I said. I thought that maybe I should stop Raquel from saying anything at all, but the truth is I was interested. “Raquel, after this, stop telling people!”
“I haven’t told anyone!” she said, indignant. “Look, all she said was that she went to see him twice about a married man she was in love with.”
“A married man!” Eugenia crossed herself, but then turned her attention back to Raquel.
“Well, the first time he figured out she had some medical problems, and he told her what they were and to come back after they were treated. She was a little pissed that he sent her away, but she was so desperate for his help she did it.”
“What were her medical problems?” asked Eugenia innocently.
“Mamá, we shouldn’t ask that,” she said over her cup of coffee, staring right at Raquel.
“I’m not sure, something to do with her periods,” she shrugged. “That’s why she was kind of mad, because at first she thought he was being condescending, blaming her distress on ‘female problems.’ But he turned out to be right.”
“What happened with the married man?” asked Lidia, her heavy diamond and gold jewelry flashing in the sun. She tapped a long, manicured nail on the glass table. “Do we know him?”
“No, someone from work.” Raquel shrugged. “She said she dumped him after she started to feel better. Then she went back to Rafa and asked him to help her find true love.”
“Really?” asked Lidia. “How does he do that?”
“He has a spirit guide. A ballerina. She wasn’t supposed to tell me.” The three of them turned to me and waited, but I said nothing, so Raquel continued. “My cousin offered, but he wouldn’t take any money. All he wanted was a gift for the muerta.”
“What did she bring?” asked Eugenia. “Candy? An animal?”
“Rafa doesn’t do that,” I interjected.
“No, she brought some music. You know, I guess dancers like music.” Raquel reached across the table and took the last pastry, a caracol, Rafa’s favorite. “They sat on the floor and he went into a trance. When he came back, he told her it was done, that she would meet her true love. He talks to the ballerina.” Raquel arched her brows and licked a dab of pastry cream off her finger. “Did you know that, Amanda?”
“I’m aware.” I wrinkled my nose at her. “You’d better not discuss this with anyone else, Raquel. He wouldn’t like it.”
“I told you, I won’t!” She brushed the crumbs off her skirt and wiped her mouth with a napkin she threw down in frustration. “I don’t gossip!”
“Well, mija, did she meet anyone?”
“That’s the best part.” Raquel sat forward and scooted her chair closer to the table, then clasped her hands in front of her. “She started taking baths with the herbs Rafa gave her, and using some special oil, too. Two days later a man in her apartment complex confessed his love for her. She said she couldn’t believe it. Out of the blue.” Raquel tapped the table in front of her with both hands, her heavy gold bracelets clanking against the glass top.
“Are you sure you have that right?” asked Lidia, pushing her coffee cup aside. “A total stranger fell madly in love with her because of some oil?”´ Raquel nodded yes with absolute certainty.
“I’m not surprised,” said Eugenia, shielding her eyes from the now direct sun. “Some santeros are very powerful. It sounds like your husband has a gift.”
“He has many gifts,” I said. “Rafa’s a wonderful, selfless doctor. Soon he’ll be practicing here in Miami.”
“Are you sure about that, Amanda?” asked Lidia. “How would he possibly have the time, with the business and his other practice? I mean, from what Oscar tells me, Madrina’s makes a fortune. I can’t imagine he’s going to leave all that behind to become a student doctor again.”
“Lidia, I’m going inside,” said Eugenia, standing. “The sun is getting too strong.”
“Let me help you,” said Lidia, taking her mother’s arm. “Be right back.”
“Amanda, what’s going on tonight? Carlos says there’s some special party on a boat.”
“I’m not sure. I’ve been so busy thinking about next Sunday that we haven’t talked about it.” I couldn’t help but erupt into a smile a mile wide. “Can you believe it?”
“Girl, you’re getting married!” Together we squealed in delight, giggling like two schoolgirls about my dress, the reception, our Spanish honeymoon and of course my wedding night.
***
That night, Rafa arrived home late, rushing in from work with several bags of food from the restaurant. He’d brought home an assortment of dishes for us to try, and before he even got out of his suit and tie he’d laid it all out on the kitchen counter, shooing a curious Lars and George away. Through no fault of their own, Rafa was getting sick of their ubiquitous presence and lately he didn’t even attempt to hide it.
“From the updated menu,” he said. “We have a new chef who wants to try out some fusion items.” He went down the line pointing to each container describing the new dishes, some with an Asian flair, and some with Central and South American influences.
“Sal loves this one,” he said. “He says coconut rice was one of his favorite dishes back home in Colombia.” He took a small plastic spoon from the bag and fed me a little bite. “We’ll have all of this out on the boat tonight.”
“Oh, is that the reason for the party? To try out the new menu?” I came over and gave him a kiss. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you told me. I’ve just been so distracted with wedding plans.”
“No, I haven’t mamita,” he said, loosening his tie. “I’ve been trying to find the right moment to explain what tonight is about, but I couldn’t think of a good way.”
“Moment for what?” I lifted a few more lids, enjoying the enticing aromas and colors in every container. “Oh, I have to tell you what Raquel and Lidia were talking about today. Raquel said you gave some woman a special oil and a complete stranger fell in love with her. Did you really do that?” I repeated the story Raquel told us while he listened in disbelief.
“Raquel should not be repeating any of it,” he said, highly irritated, “but I can tell you the oil did not attract a complete stranger. Come on, that’s ridiculous. There’s a lot more to it, but I’m not at liberty to say. She got it all wrong though.”
“Hm,” I said, picking a piece of meat from one of the containers. “She said you went in to a trance and talked to the ballerina then and there. Last time you told me she comes to you in your dreams. I didn’t know you could call her. Should I be jealous? Is she pretty?”
“I can’t believe this,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “Yes, she’s pretty. But she’s dead, sweetheart. Hardly anything to worry about. And now that I’m learning more about what I’m able to do, I think my dreams are actually trances that happen before I fall asleep. Little by little, I’m learning how to control them when I’m awake.”
“Rafa, why do I always hear these things from other people?” Then I remembered what Lidia had said. “Lidia thinks you’re not going to practice medicine anymore, and from the way you’re talking, it sounds like you have other priorities.”
“One thing at a time,” he said. “But do me a favor and let me know when you’re going to see Lidia and Raquel, so I can prepare myself, alright?” He was right. Those two always managed to rile me up about something.
“Aren’t you going to be a doctor again?” I already knew the answer. I’d noticed his expression when I asked him a minute ago. He was done.
“I can’t, mamita
.”
“Rafa, I told you that your English is going to be perfect by next year,” I said. “We missed a couple of weeks but we’re still on track.”
“It’s not that.” He came around the counter and sat next to me. “When Demarais took you to Cuba, and I knew I had to go get you, I asked for help from a very powerful entity. He said we could return safely, but he demanded a great sacrifice in exchange.”
“Rafa, you didn’t—”
“Of course not. The sacrifice was my career as a medical doctor. I’m a different kind of healer now. A spiritual one. There’s no going back.”
“How could you?” Horrified, I took his hands in mine. “How can you just walk away?”
“Amada, your life was in danger. I would have given far more to make sure you were safe. It wasn’t even a question.”
“Your freedom,” I said, remembering Esteban’s words. He put himself at great personal risk to go back to Cuba today, and no one could talk him out of it.
“I would have, yes.” He drew his hands out from under mine and stroked my palms with his thumbs. “Without a second thought.”
“Are you going to be happy?” I asked, still in disbelief of what he’d given up for me.
“I think so,” he said. “It’s a different path, but I can still help people. And Madrina’s is a tremendous responsibility. The business is more time-consuming than I could have ever imagined, and the philanthropy is very important to me.”
“It’s my fault.” If I hadn’t run off, he wouldn’t have been forced into a trading away his life’s work.
“No, don’t say that. It would have happened one way or another. It was meant to be.” He glanced back at the food, to one of the containers in the back. “I can still help people. Open that one.”
“”I’m not hungry,” I said. “I’ll try it tomorrow.”
“You don’t have to eat it. Please.” He glanced at it again, apprehensive for some reason.
I reached across the counter and pulled it toward me, expecting some sort of exotic Latin fare, but instead it was a dish that brought back memories I wasn’t sure I wanted to revisit. “Macaroni and cheese?” I closed the lid and pushed it away. “Since when do you like that? I don’t.” The last time I’d seen macaroni and cheese had been when I’d served it to William years ago. It had been his favorite food, one of the few I could ever get him to eat. It was like seeing a ghost.
“I ordered it for William.” Rafa’s blue eyes flashed as his hand clamped down on mine, probably to make sure I wouldn’t leave. “He told me it was his favorite food. It’s a gift for him.”
With those words, the room started to spin, and I lost my balance, forcing me to steady myself on Rafa. I went to sit on one of the stools, but instead he guided me to one of the dining room chairs and sat beside me.
“Breathe,” he said. “You’re fine. It’s your blood pressure. Breathe.” Slowly he came back into focus, and the vertigo subsided.
“Did you say he told you?” It was too absurd to even contemplate, yet he couldn’t have been more serious.
“The first night you were away, when I was feeling very low, Doña Delfina came to me in a dream, and William was with her. He lives in the room at the end of the hall.”
“That was his room,” I sobbed. “No, no, I can’t talk about this.”
“You can,” said Rafa. He took my hands in his and grasped them firmly. “Look at me. You have to. For your own peace and his. For our family. It’s time to stop torturing yourself.”
I listened as Rafa told me how he’d met William with Delfina and all the things they’d talked about, but what threw me was his description of William as a twenty-five-year-old man. Of all the things that had haunted me about my son’s death, one of the most painful had been that I’d never see him grow up or know what he looked like. It was inconceivable that Rafa could give me that gift now. It was then that I understood the power of his work, his ability to heal in both conventional and unconventional ways.
“That’s probably why he came to me in that form,” said Rafa. “He knows you miss him dearly, so he won’t leave. Don’t you remember? The first night I came here from the ship, I was uncomfortable in your bedroom, so we stayed at a hotel until Delfina came in and cleansed the house. He was living in your room, Amada, until Delfina made him move back to his.”
“William looks like me?” I asked, stifling a sob.
“Just like you. He has a beauty mark here,” said Rafa, pointing to his chin, in the exact same spot as mine. “With Kieran’s hair color.”
“What’s he like?” I wiped a tear from my face and then from my nose. Rafa went to the next room and brought back a box of tissues for me.
“So intelligent,” he said softly. “He said his IQ is 160 and yours is 151, and they’re both higher than mine.”
“He didn’t!” I tried not to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. William had always been putting me in awkward situations as a child, and it was strangely comforting to know it was just his personality and that it would have been the same in adulthood.
“It was ADHD, Amada, not autism.”
“Are you sure? The doctors—they were adamant. They said he might not be able to live independently.” I was numb. Rafa had just answered one of the biggest questions of my life, one I was certain I’d never know the answer to. And now I did, because of him.
“Amada, he would have been fine on the right medication, just like my brother. Quirky maybe, but smart as hell and quite capable of having a full life. It was a misdiagnosis, perhaps financially motivated in some ways. William said they insisted on test after test, specialist after specialist, and that’s why you hate doctors and hospitals so much. They scared the hell out of you, and in the end, they were wrong anyway. I’m so sorry for giving you a hard time. You have every reason to be wary, but please understand we’re—they’re not all the same. Some truly care nothing for money and just want to help.”
“Like you.” I sat quietly with Rafa for a few minutes taking everything in, trying not to let my emotions get the best of me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was waiting for the right moment, but I ran out of time. I need the new moon tonight.”
“I’m glad you met him,” I said, pulling another tissue from the box. “That makes me happy.”
“He said he’ll go when you have another child. He’ll make sure you get an easy one next time.” Rafa smiled, as much because of William’s kindness as at the thought of our baby. “He wants you to know you were the best mother ever, and then he said to tell you to ‘worry about yourself.’ Is that something he used to say to you?”
At those words the tears came back again, and this time they were uncontrollable. I sobbed into Rafa’s shoulder. It was one of the few expressions William had used on a regular basis when he wanted to be left alone to get up to no good. I’d never heard it before, and I hadn’t heard it since. Without a doubt, it was him.
“Amada, William told me he’d like to come back and say goodbye. You didn’t make it to the hospital on time, did you?”
“No,” I whispered, my voice thin and shaky. “It’s haunted me for years, Rafa. I drank so much to try and forget, but it didn’t work.”
“Of course it didn’t,” he said. “Now you’ll get the chance. We’re all going to heal together. He’ll always be part of our family. The dead are never really gone, Amada, just on a different journey.”
“That’s why you want to have the party out on the water,” I said, finally understanding.
“Yes, that’s is where my connection is strongest.” He was rubbing my arm now, comforting me. Rafa was many things, but at his core was benevolence and compassion. It was his purpose.
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, but I suspect it has to do with my brother dying in the ocean.”
“Rafa—” I said, breaking up again.
“Shh,” he said, embracing me. “It’s a happy occasion. William is finally g
oing to be free of guilt and responsibility and so are you. He has so many things to do on the other side. Let’s celebrate that tonight with our other family, and hopefully some of them will get to talk to their loved ones as well.”
“Through you?” I asked. “All of them?”
“It depends what the muertos and the Orishas want,” he said, “but I don’t want you to be frightened. It’s one of my responsibilities as a santero, and I’m happy to do it, especially for you.” Rising from the chair, he helped me up. “Let’s get dressed and go to our special party, shall we?”
“Rafa,” I said, slipping my arms around his waist under his jacket. “I love you.”
“I love you, Amada,” he said. “So much.”
“No,” I said, pulling him to me and squeezing him hard. “More than love.”
“I know,” he said, wrapping himself around me. “Me too.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Blue Moon was only a corporate charter, but she was a beauty. A one-hundred-eleven foot catamaran, I’d fallen in love with her on the spot when Sal, Sandro, Alex and I had gone to select a vessel for the party. Aside from her impressive size and ample space for over three hundred passengers, what impressed me most were her three uncluttered levels, one for dining, one for entertaining, and an upper floor called the “star deck,” essentially a large square terrace or courtyard completely open to the sky. She wasn’t ultra-luxurious and sleek like Amada and Kieran’s yacht, but she was far bigger and quite inviting, the perfect boat to entertain a large crowd on a leisurely cruise. At a cost of about one thousand dollars an hour, I knew the money would be well spent, recovered many times over in the charitable donations we’d receive for the anonymous distribution of medical goods I’d arranged through Esteban. The supplies would go straight from the largest medical supply in the southeast, owned by a friend of a Santuario member, straight to the most poverty-stricken parts of the Caribbean. That alone made the evening a success before it even began, and for that and many other reasons I was in high spirits.
It was a beautiful, balmy night, and as our dearest friends boarded the Blue Moon, Amada and I welcomed them together, accepting hugs, kisses and well wishes from Los Treinta and their partners. Amada had chosen my suit for the evening, this one in navy, paired with a crisp white shirt and blue tie, a perfect complement to her long, flowing navy dress. After greeting us, guests were escorted down below to the entertainment level to enjoy an abundance of cocktails and appetizers, leaving their anonymous donations with Sandro and his entire security team, sans Lars and George, who had stayed behind to watch the house. Whether it was ten dollars or the keys to a Mercedes, each member was welcome to bring as little or as much as he or she wanted for the evening’s philanthropic endeavor, with my own donation of fifty thousand dollars first in the box.
The Santero Page 28