Suddenly Antonio turned and tugged on Mark's sleeve. “It's time now.”
Corinne was astonished when Mark pulled a rocket from the paper bag.
“In honor of your brother,” he said, handing it over to the lad. “But I forgot matches.”
“I can find matches.” Proud as a peacock, Antonio planted the rocket at the head of the gravesite. The guests, seeing what was about to happen, stepped back in anticipation. The man who'd played the comic roles for the children earlier moved forward, offering his cigarette lighter for the fuse.
With a loud hiss and a pop, the rocket shot into the air, straight up toward the cloudless blue morning sky. The guests applauded in delight, but the sheer joy on Antonio's tear-streaked face filled Corinne from the toes up.
Since the introduction of gunpowder by the Spanish conquerors, the Mexican people delighted in it. Fireworks were as common at funerals as they were at celebrations.
Wonderstruck, Corinne turned to Mark. “How did you know?”
“Juan Pablo told me last night at the cantina that no funeral was complete without at least one rocket,” he told her. “So I bought one, just in case there weren't any.” He shifted, uncomfortable under her curious appraisal. “It was Antonio's and my little secret.”
What made this guy tick? One minute she wanted to strangle him, and the next, hug him.
“It was perfect,” Antonio announced, joining them. “I know that Enrique is smiling from heaven.
Gracias, gracias, gracias.”
The boy hugged Mark, nearly taking him off his feet.
“
Perdoname
, señor
y
señora . . .”
Startled, Corinne turned to see Lorenzo. “My family and I wish to say our
adiós
to my nephew,” he explained, easing the child away from Mark. “Will you and your
esposo
not have a mug of tequila for my late nephew?”
My husband?
The reference to Mark so stunned Corinne that Mark replied for both of them.
“No thanks. Alcohol puts us to lose.”
Corinne wasn't sure whether it was Mark's use of the idiom or his saying that alcohol wasn't good for them that shocked her more.
“I'll be right here waiting, Antonio,” she assured the wary child. For Lorenzo's benefit she added, “We have to leave very soon for the orphanage, as we have a supper engagement.”
“
Un momento solamente,
Señora
,
” he assured her.
“I thought you'd be all over him like ugly on an ape for that,” Mark said, as Pozas led Antonio away.
“For thinking I'd marry someone like you, or for thinking that I'd drink?” she quipped, never taking her eyes off Antonio.
Lorenzo's family surrounded the boy, children hugging, women kissing, and the men shaking his hand or clapping him on the back.
“Take your pick.”
Corinne softened her answer with the hint of a smile. “You have some redeeming qualities.”
“Oh?” Mark stepped closer, invading her space with the scent of his aftershave, the warmth exuding from his body, his breath brushing past her ear.
Her senses blaring like an emergency broadcast signal, Corinne broke away to meet Antonio as he made his way back from the family cluster with Father Menasco.
“Ready to go?” she asked with a forced brightness.
“Un momento, por favor.”
He made his way to the small mounded grave site, now covered with bougainvillea and a blanket of flowers made by the women. Reaching into his shirt pocket, he took out a small palm cross that he'd made in crafts at the orphanage, pressed it to his lips, and laid it on the center of the floral covering.
When the boy backed away, it was as if he had left a part of his heart behind.
“Pues,”
he said shakily, joining her and Mark. “Now I am ready to go to my new family.”
The ride back to Mexicalli was blessedly quiet, Mark thought. The tuba player remained in his head, pumping blasts of brass in his brain. For some reason, Antonio gave up his command of the CD player to sit in the back with him, which was fine, since the boy seemed preoccupied with staring at the passing landscape around the flower-dotted lake. In the front seat, Soledad's voice took over where the ejected Ricky Martin left off. From what little Mark could pick out, she ping-ponged between praise and criticism of the affair as a whole.
“Who would think it?” she exclaimed. “First he wants his brother's boys. Then he doesn't. But then with nine children of his own . . .” She paused to tut in disapproval.
“Do you have a brother?” Antonio asked beside him.
Mark unglued his tongue. “What's that, amigo?”
“Do you have a brother?”
“Yes.”
Alive, thank goodness.
Somewhere inside Mark, surprise registered. Yes, he'd like to strangle Blaine, or at least shake him into getting a life, but overall, he cared deeply about his elder sibling. So Blaine was overly responsibleâsomeone in the family had to be, Mark supposed.
“Does he like adventure?”
Mark searched the somber boy's dark eyes, wondering where he was going with this. “Not hardly . . . unless you count having cereal once in a while instead of his usual bagel.”
“Then you are very lucky.” Nodding in agreement with himself, Antonio turned to look out the window again as they passed a lookout point over the lake.
Some vacationers were waterskiing, skirting around fishing vessels where tiny figures struggled with nets. The square pontoon shuttle that offered a direct, but not always reliable, service from Mexicalli to Flores puttered its way toward the Mexicalli dock, which was just a speck in the distance.
“If I had been the big brother,” Antonio spoke up, seemingly transfixed by the passing scenery, “I would not let Enrique explore so much or leave the house without telling where he was going. And if it put him to lose, I would not let him go.” The boy turned to Mark with a broken smile. “He would not like it. He would call me
abuelo
for it, but today he would be alive, no?”
“Probably so, amigo.” Mark thought of Blaine. He'd not called his worrisome brother “grandfather,” but he had referred to him as “the old man” after Blaine lectured him on his less-than-perfect pursuit of life.
“But I would only tell him such things because I loveâ” The word caught in the child's throat, backing his anguish to his eyes, where it welled over.
Unfastening his seat belt, Mark slid over to put a comforting arm around the boy. “You go right ahead and cry, amigo. Better to get it out than hold it in.”
“I should have told someone when Enrique left,” Antonio cried into Mark's rib cage. “But he . . . he said that he would come back before bedtime . . . that he had important business with our uncle.”
Mark stiffened at the mention of the man with beady eyes. “Did you tell the authorities this?”
Antonio nodded.
“SÃ,
and they talk to TÃo Lorenzo,
peroâ”
“But what?”
“Pero
TÃo Lorenzo said that Enrique came for the novena the next day and after it, he left to return to the orphanage.” Antonio sniffed hard, recovering most of what had come close to soaking into Mark's shirt. Regardless of his aversion to kids' runny noses, Mark held the boy tight against him, willing to take whatever leaked if it would ease the grief.
“If I had remembered that it was the novena,” Antonio said shakily, “then I would have gone to pray for my
madre y padre
and eat the turkey too.” He straightened with a shot of indignation.
“Pues,
I have only two years less than Enrique.”
“And because you were more cautious, you will have many years more,” Mark told him. “Age doesn't make a guy smart. That's up here.” He tapped his temple and winced.
Bad idea. It not only hurt, but drove home the point that smart had not been in residence when he decided to throw it all out and have a little fun. Soon as that supper party was over, he was hitting his new sack, even if it was an air mattress. Staying at the hacienda would enable him to sleep a little longer. Not only could he keep an eye on the place, but Soledad didn't get as early a start as the chickens, the braying burro, and the protesting cows next to the parsonage.
While Mark napped that afternoon, Corinne and Soledad tackled the paint and crayon marks on the wall. A phone call to Capitán Nolla revealed that he'd taken pictures after they left and was investigating. As they spoke, she envisioned him sitting at his desk, full of himself and cigar smoke, dismissing the case as vandalism by kids.
That man couldn't find his backside with both hands,
she thought. She painted over the words that hadn't come off, while Soledad made up the beds at the hacienda. Since Mark announced he was staying over, they'd decided it was time to move in as well. With the three of them in residence, perhaps further mischief would be discouraged. And just in case it wasn't, she had a borrowed baseball bat from the orphanage sports closet.
“You will knock a home run with their heads, no?” Antonio observed, highly amused by her choice of weapon.
“If Soledad doesn't get them with her broom,” Corinne quipped.
To keep the boy's thoughts away from the funeral, she'd asked Antonio to help her bring over her clothing, which she placed in a makeshift closet. With the curtains hung and the boxes put away, the rooms called to be occupied. While Mark and Corinne attended Doña Violeta's dinner party, Soledad, with the help of her sister, was to finish moving in her and Mark's belongings.
No doubt that by the time Corinne and Mark returned, every room in the house would be protected by a cross of some nature. Not that the crosses themselves had any power. When Corinne pointed that out to Soledad, the housekeeper nodded in full agreement.
“So I said, Corina,” she said, as if Corinne had been loco to suggest anything else. “But it cannot hurt to put the crosses up to scare away the
brujas,
so that He will not have to battle them, no?”
It was pointless to argue. Soledad's faith in Christ was without question. And if the crosses made her feel more safe, fine. Corinne would stick with faith and the baseball bat.
While she and Mark were gone, Father Menasco offered to stay with the women, since the housekeeper refused to stay in the house after dark, with or without crosses, unless a man was present.
As if the man sprawled on the air mattress in the other room could do much to help them out,
Corinne thought as she entered her room after dropping Antonio off at the orphanage.
Although Mark
had
been thoughtful in bringing Antonio a rocket for Enrique's funeral. It had brightened an otherwise dreadful experience for the boy. And on the way home in the SUV, Corinne couldn't make out what Mark and Antonio were saying to each other, but when Mark disconnected his seat belt and held the crying child, her peeve at his night on the town melted. The man was a screwup, she thought, but he wasn't quite as self-absorbed as she'd initially thought. Maybe he'd be fine as a friend.
Deciding to take pity on him and give him a few minutes more shut-eye, she hurried through a quick shower, complete with hot water that remained at the selected temperatureâas long as Soledad knew ahead of time not to turn on any other faucet. Afterward, she removed her yellow sundress from its sealed dry-cleaner bag and put it on. With Mexicalli's bug-friendly climate, such precautions were wise if one preferred to be the only occupant of a garment.
While she dried her hair, she heard the shower running again and assumed that Sleeping Beauty had awakened and was preparing for the party in his honor. Which reminded her that he had looked beautiful to her for stopping that cart that day . . . until she found out who he was.
Do you think that they were worse sinners? I tell you no; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.
Corinne stopped, blow dryer in hand, as the words of Father Menasco's sermon at the funeral popped into her mind. He'd been addressing the reason for the tragedy of Enrique and his parents, lest anyone read some divine judgment into it, as people were inclined to doâboth in Jesus' time and now. Accidents happened, and only God can tell us why in His time. That had been the message, but Corinne had been so absorbed in her suspicions surrounding the circumstances of Enrique's disappearance that she hadn't paid close attention.
But she wasn't the one Father Menasco was speaking to. She had never thought the tragedy was any sort of divine retribution
. Like hangovers are . . . or maybe community service for DUI.
She put the dryer down. She was being ridiculous. God wasn't telling her that it was okay for Mark to destroy his brain cells with tequila or waste his talents and jeopardize a bright future. People made mistakes, and sooner or later they paid the consequences. They got what they deserved.
That was in the Word. End of story. She certainly didn't need to repent; the hunk in the shower did. She shook her head to dislodge the thought. The last image she wanted in her mind was that soaped-up, gym-chiseled body.
“Get a grip,” she ordered the young woman in the mirror over her dresser. “You don't even like him.” Her image, or was it her conscience, mocked her. “Okay, I like him a little . . . but he's bad news. You know it and I know it.”
Without thinking, she shook her bottle of perfume, taking her agitation out on it before putting on a few dabs of the expensive scent. Her emotions were tangled enough without adding too much thought to them regarding Mark Madison.
Standing back to get a fuller view of her efforts, Corinne gave herself a nod of approval and grabbed her devotional book. Not having had time that morning, she intended to catch up on the day's reading while Mark finished getting ready.
Unable to access the kitchen through the occupied utility bath, Corinne went through the main hall to grab a glass of tea from the fridge. She sat at the stained and nicked red Formica table in the center of the room and opened the book to her marker. She took a sip of tea as she viewed the topic of the dayâLuke 13:1â5.