Corinne was torn between helping Soledad and being a good hostess. But the housekeeper had summoned Tizoc through Primitivo to help with the cleaning.
“He needs the work,” the old man told them. “But removing the dirt will not remove the bad spirits. The dirt is but the footprint of evil.”
Was this some sort of spiritual warfare beyond the depth of her understanding? Not that Corinne believed in the abilities of man or woman to conjure them and use them at will. But she did believe that good and evil spirits worked through mankind.
Father, in the name of Jesus, protect us, if this is a battle beyond the human realm.
“Is anything wrong?” Doña Violeta asked, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table.
Corinne turned on a burner to bring the water in the teapot to boil.
“Someone doesn't want us in the hacienda, Doña Violeta,” she answered, fetching two mismatched cups and saucers from the red-and-white painted cabinets. “And they are using fake ghosts and witchcraft to cover it.” She put the cups on the table. “And the worst part is that Capitán Nolla doesn't think it's anything more than some precocious teens behind it.”
“Behind what, exactly?” Violeta moved her beaded drawstring purse to her lap.
Corinne told her all about it as she prepared the tea, reminding the old woman of the first warning, filling her in on the ghost's appearance and their suspicions regarding Mark's illness. “I can't imagine what is so special about this place, but it's certainly too much for coincidence, don't you think?”
“Coincidence is as mysterious as truth sometimes,” Violeta replied with a Confucius-like wisdom.
But when Corinne gave her a curious glance, prompting explanation, Violeta took up her tea and blew on the steaming surface. Her expression was distressed, while her hands trembled so that the tea lapped nearly to the brim.
“Doña Violeta?” Corinne placed her hand on her companion's arm, soft and frail beneath the thin covering of silk. “I promise, Mark and I will see the orphanage finished. We won't leave until the children have a place in which to live and play.”
A tired smile stretched Violeta's lips. “It isn't that,
querida.
I have seen the dedication in your heart and his dedication to you in his eyes. Tell me that you feel the same for him.” Withdrawing her hands, she placed them in her lap, her back straight as an arrow. “I saw Diego kiss you at the fiesta . . . so I wondered.”
“Diego?” Corinne laughed. “Doña Violeta, we are only friends,” she assured the distraught woman. “Which is why I felt a little uneasy accepting his gift. I mean, it could look like there was more to it.”
If the eyes were the window to the soul, Doña Violeta's were a pale blue sea of despair. “A gift such as that is appropriateâ”
“Stillâ”
“âbetween cousins.”
Cousins?
Corinne practically dropped her teacup on its saucer, grateful that she'd not yet tasted the tea. Otherwise she surely would have sprayed her companion with it.
“Rafael knew my terrible secret, of course, but Diego was but a child. He had no idea.”
Corinne's voice finally kicked into gear. “What are you saying, Doña Violeta?”
Doña Violeta clutched her purse as though it contained the last shred of her composure. “Ah, where to begin?” she fretted, venturing to cover Corinne's hand with hers.
“Querida Corina . . .”
She trailed off and braced herself with a breath. “I am your
abuela.”
Abuela.
Corinne translated the word twice and each time she reached the same conclusionâgrandmother. She opened her mouth to speak, but the tide of emotion rising from the region of her mind where she'd placed abandoned hopes blocked her throat. It was the last thing she'd expected the woman to say.
Doña Violeta caressed the side of Corinne's cheek.
“Mi niñita linda
. You are wondering why I have said nothing, no?”
Corinne nodded. She'd been in Mexicalli since May, and that didn't count the summer before, when she and her family had traced her mother's roots to the villageâwhen Mexicalli had won her heart.
“Shame is one reason,” the old woman confessed.
So the MarÃa of record was really MarÃa Quintana de la Vega. Corinne could hardly believe her ears, but her heart didn't need confirmation. It was shocking, but it felt right. All this time . . .
“And . . .” Violeta's voice cracked. “I . . . I wanted to get to know you. To see if you had your mother's forgiving heart . . . not my hard one.”
The notion that Violeta had a hard heart did not set well with Corinne. “Never can it be said that
Doña Dulce
has a hard heart,” she averred. Getting up, she drew the older woman to her. “Not my
abuelita.”
Her little grandmother. The hundreds of hugs that Corinne had stored away with her hopes of finding her blood family begged to be bestowed.
“But I was not always the woman I am now,” Violeta said in a shaky voice.
Corinne gave her grandmother a gentle hug, absorbing her heart-wrenching sob. Nor could Corinne help her own sob of joy. She'd turned her past over to God to fill the void and contented herself with serving the people of her mother's native village. But thisâ
“God has answered my prayers with more than I asked,” she whispered against her grandmother's silver crown. “He not only gave me a grandmother, but He made her extra special because she was you.” Soft and scented with lavender, she thought, like the sachets that Violeta had made from her flower garden and presented to Corinne when she first arrived. They were to keep Corinne's unmentionables fresh in the rainy season, the prim little lady confided with a rose pink blush.
“P-pero,
I threw your mother out,” Violeta lamented. “She disgraced our family with that despicable artist.”
“You mean my father?” Corinne took no offense. She understood the ways of Violeta's generation and station. “It's okay. No worries,” she said, mimicking Juan Pablo. “I think it's ironic that my adopted father was an alcoholic, but you know, he was not me. Nor is my real father. I am my own person and am grateful that I had a good family whom God eventually straightened out. Did you know who he was?”
Doña Violeta shook her head. “I made it a point not to . . . another thing for which I am sorry. If MarÃa loved him, there had to be some good, no? And look at the beautiful daughter he made with my MarÃa.” Violeta's sobs were now reduced to little huffs between words. “And when I first saw you, I nearly fainted. You are her image.”
“Do you have pictures?” Corinne hoped so. She wanted to see what her mother looked like.
Violeta nodded. “I have kept them all these years. I threw her out, but I could not throw out her photos. I still miss her.”
Corinne's thoughts raced and tumbled forward, then backward. “But what happened to my mother? Do you know?”
Pain renewed its assault on Violeta's face. Corinne wished she could take it upon herself, but she wanted to know. Perhaps telling her about MarÃa might provide a long-needed release.
“The authorities told me that it was from drugs,” the older woman said, digging into her purse. Upon finding her handkerchief, she blew her nose, taking time to compose herself. “The things that addicts use were on her person when she was found in a church in Mexico City . . . and I shudder to think of the circumstances in which she'd lived.”
“She made some bad choices . . . just like my adopted father.”
Tears ravaged the old woman's eyes again. “But you did not forbid him to come home. And for that, I will pay before God's throne someday. I, in my pride and righteousness, refused her a second chance.”
So that is why Violeta had been so adamant about giving Mark a chance . . . about not making the same mistake that she made with a loved oneâCorinne's mother.
“I never had the chance to ask her forgiveness.” Folding her arms on the table, Violeta buried her face in them, drained.
Corinne rose to get a fresh cloth from the utility-bath. After wetting it with cold water and wringing the excess out, she returned to wipe her grandmother's face. “Now there,
abuelita,
you mustn't punish yourself any further. Guilt is something that we carry on our own. God is waiting to take it from us, if we'll give it up.”
“I have asked His forgiveness seventy-times-seven, but still I cannot forgive myself. She was my daughter, my only child.”
“And she died in her Father's arms,” Corinne said gently. “Did you think about that? That perhaps her last words were with Him?”
Violeta raised her head. Corinne caught a glimmer of hope swimming in her grandmother's bereaved gaze.
“And if MarÃa was right with God, then she had to have forgiven you.” Kneeling at Violeta's knee, Corinne lifted the woman's trembling hands to her lips and kissed each one. “And I know that God has forgiven you, because in His way He brought us together.” Framing her face with her grandmother's hands, she added in a voice filled with affection. “Perhaps I am your second chance,
abuelita.”
A twinkle kindled in Violeta's tear-swollen gaze. The lines around her mouth tightened, drawing it into a tentative smile. “So much wisdom from someone so young.” She cradled Corinne's face with her hands and leaned over, planting a light kiss on her forehead. “And such a blessing for this undeserving soul.”
Corinne rose, the void of her lost heritage suddenly filled to the brim. “Now, as soon as we refresh our faces from all this boo-hooing, I want to share my wonderful news with Soledad and Mark. It isn't every day a girl finds a grandmother as wonderful as you.”
Doña Violeta's face brightened. “We could have a party. I love parties.”
“My parents would love to attend,” Corinne blurted out without thinking. “Unless it would make you feel awkward.”
“Querida mia,
I would like to thank them personally for raising such a fine granddaughter as yourself.”
“I thought the world of you before,” Corinne said, giving in to another hug. “And now I do that
and
love you to bits.”
“We will have suchâ”
A child's scream cut her grandmother off in midsentence. As Violeta groped at her chest with a start, Corinne glanced in the direction of the hall.
Antonio!
The scream jerked Mark from a drift of sleep, bringing him upright on the bed. Antonio was no longer perched beside him reading, although the book was still there. Instead, the boy stood at the side of the bed, staring, blanched and wide-eyed, at something on the floor.
“What is it?” Mark shouted, vaulting to his feet. Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the baseball bat that Corinne had left propped in the corner next to her nightstand.
“The
c-caracol
,” the boy cried, pointing to the floor where the gift box from Diego Quintana lay open, its content spilled and shining in the light from the window.
Corinne burst into the room. “Antonio, what's wrong?”
“The
caracol
,” Mark told her, pointing to the jewelry. “Is that the
caracol
that killed your family?”
“It does not look like that at first. Papá showed me a picture of this kind,” Antonio explained, his voice edged with fear. “Papá said that it is very expensive like this and that people will pay us much money to show them where such
caracoles
are . . . that we would be rich.” He turned his luminous gaze toward Mark. “But instead, all of my family is dead but me.”
A mental lightbulb flashed in Mark's mind. Was it possible?
“Do you know where the
caracoles
are?” he asked the boy.
Instead of answering, Antonio looked away. “To know that is to die. I do not wish to die.”
“It's in the caves or mine shafts under Hacienda Ortiz, isn't it?”
Antonio said nothing, but his thinned, bloodless lips spoke volumes.
“But I do not understand,” Doña Violeta said from the doorway. “What is this about a snail and Diego's gift?”
“This is made from no ordinary snail, Doña Violeta.” Mark noticed the woman's red, swollen eyes. “What's wrong?”
In fact, Corinne didn't look so hot either.
Corinne put her arm around Doña Violeta and smiled widely. “Ask us what is
right
.”
Mark was incredulous. Here they were on the verge of finding the reason behind the ghost and its spells, and she wanted to play word games. “What's
right,
then?”
He regretted the bite of his tone the moment the question was out, as it summoned reinforcements to the tears that had already assaulted her face.
“I found my grandmother, Mark. Or rather, she found me.” She gave an equally emotional Violeta a squeeze.
“I claimed her,” the latter told him, with a regal lift of her gray head. “She is Corina Diaz Quintana de la Vega.”
“I'd hate to have to fill out forms with that name.” Laying the bat on the bed, he approached the two women and embraced both of them. “But I couldn't be happier for you both. Looks to me like you got a prize in each other.”
“And when Corina marries you, I will have two grand prizes, no?”
Mark's thoughts braked at the new twist in the road. But instead of his usual turn and run, he approached with caution. “Aren't you putting the cart before the donkey?” He asked Violeta, but his attention shifted to Corinne's reaction.
He'd grown fond of that shade of rose, but he'd just declared his feelings for Corinne earlier that day. He hadn't gotten far enough to declare his intentions yet . . . mainly because he hadn't thought that far ahead.
“Perhaps yes, perhaps no,” Violeta replied, “but they are
both
in my stable. How I love both of you.”
“I suggest that we celebrate my family reunion and talk about . . . about,” Corinne stammered, then seized upon one of Violeta's expressions . . . “such
silliness
later.” She stooped to pick up the jewelry, replacing it in the box. “Now I'm really worried.”