Fifteen-year-old Abigail Armstrong's mother, Rosalie, has
been the Meriwhethers' housekeeper since Abigail was an
infant. She thought they were regarded as members of the
family. So Abigail feels betrayed by her closest friend,
Lila Meriwhether, when Rosalie is accused of stealing.
Banned from the mansion and desperate to survive, their
lives are put into further turmoil when they are forced to
stay with family. Many years later, Abigail has grown up to
become a famous "brand" for her catering and food books.
She has a daughter, Phoebe, and a successful husband, Kent,
a physician involved in multiple charitable endeavors.
Lila and her son, Neal, are suffering after her husband's
suicide and have lost everything. Now, Abigail and Lila
find their positions in life reversed. As a last resort,
and after years of no communication, Lila comes to Abigail
for a job and is given the position of housekeeper.
Distraught when Kent asks her for a divorce, Abigail finds
her life once again turned upside down. Neal and Phoebe,
both experiencing hopelessness from deep-rooted pain,
decide on a course of action that has Abigail and Lila
putting aside their differences and drawing strength from
one another and their past friendship.
Eileen Goudge, author of WOMAN IN RED, has written a
beautiful and heart-wrenching story of the love and
closeness two women share as teens only to be destroyed.
Now they share a need to take solace in each other and
restore their once-close relationship. This story will
reach into your soul and place you into the characters'
thoughts. Highly recommended reading!
“Rosie and Abigail are like family,” Ina Merriweather used
to say. That is, until the day Ina abruptly cast out her
housekeeper, Rosie, and her fifteen-year-old daughter
Abigail.
Abigail felt deeply betrayed, especially by Ina’s
daughter Lila, who was her closest friend. Only Lila’s twin
brother Vaughn, with whom Abigail had been exploring the
joys and heartaches of first love, showed any compassion.
Now, twenty-five years later, an old score is about to be
settled...and an old love rekindled. Abigail is now a
self-made woman who has built an empire out of the
homemaking skills she learned from her mother. When Lila,
who married well and for decades lived the glittering life
of a Park Avenue socialite, suffers a tragic reversal of
fortune, an opportunity to right an old wrong lands squarely
in Abigail’s lap.
Lila seeks the help of her childhood friend, but learns
that the only opening available at the moment is as her
housekeeper and Lila has no choice but to accept. At the
same time, Abigail is coping with the fallout from a fire
in her Mexico factory, which took the life of an innocent
girl, whose mother, Concepción Morales, now seeks the rich
señora she holds responsible for her daughter’s death.
In a collision of fate, Abigail, Lila, and Concepción
are thrown together and must unite to save one another...and
themselves.
Excerpt
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS, Chapter 3
LAS CRUCES, MEXICO
“When I go to America, I’ll live in a nice house, with a
garden. Eduardo says the rich Americanos he works for, they
all have fruit trees—lemon, orange, grapefruit. They don’t
eat the fruit; it’s just for show.” Milagros shook her head
at the peculiar gringo ways. Her brown eyes danced with
anticipation, even so. She was counting the days until she
could join her husband, Eduardo, in the Promised Land.
Her mother, Concepción, shifted her cloth bag from one hand
to the other as they trudged along the road to the factory
where, gracias a Dios, they both had jobs. The bag
contained the extra sewing she took in. She would deliver
it to Señor Perez, the boss of the factory, to take home to
his wife, as she did every Monday morning.
“All that is very well,” she said, “but first you have to
get to America. And how do you propose to do that when you
have no money?” Even if she were able to save enough,
Concepción went on to point out, everyone knew that the
coyotes, who charged unheard-of sums to smuggle you over
the border, were thieves who would just as soon leave you
to die out in the middle of nowhere.
The light in Milagros’s eyes dimmed. “Eduardo would send
more, if everything up North didn’t cost so much. Two
dollars for a loaf of bread!
And even when there’s work, he gets half what the gringos
make, and sometimes he doesn’t get paid at all. Gringos
have no scruples, Eduardo says.” She sighed. Forgotten for
the moment were the fruit trees and shiny car and nice
house with a washing machine that she dreamed of owning one
day.
Concepción’s heart went out to Milagros, even as it
selfishly wished for another year, another two years, with
her only child. “Ay, mi hija. And this is where you wish my
grandchildren to be brought up? In a country where they
steal your money and leave fruit to rot on the ground?”
Concepción hated the idea of her daughter’s living so far
away, in a country where she
wouldn’t be able to visit. It was selfish of her, she knew.
Who was she to dictate to a married woman? But she’d lost
so much already— her parents, a husband, and three babies
that had never even drawn breath. When the time came, how
could she bear to lose her only child, the daughter she had
named Milagros for the miracle that she was?
“So now you’re worrying about grandchildren not even born?”
teased Milagros, her characteristically sunny nature
reasserting itself. In her daughter’s wide, sparkling eyes
and the jaunty sway of her hips, Concepción saw no fears
about the future, only the boundless optimism of youth and
the unblemished love for a husband she had yet to become
disillusioned with. Milagros and Eduardo had been wed only
a short while before he’d been forced to seek work up North
after losing his job. The time they’d spent living together
as man and wife numbered in weeks and months, not years.
So, yes, Concepción worried. She worried about the
inevitable disappointments and heartbreaks to come. What
did her daughter, a mere nineteen, know of life? Of men who
betrayed you and babies who died for no reason? How would
she manage when she arrived in America to find that the
streets weren’t paved with gold and that the only way of
gaining access to those fine houses was with a mop and
pail? With that in mind, Concepción had been putting a
little bit of money aside each week for Milagros, so that
she would have a cushion, however small, against the
hardships ahead. For however loath Concepción was to be
parted from her, she was determined that her daughter be
given every advantage when that day came. And someday, God
willing, her grandchildren would have all the things that
had been denied her own child: the chance to go to college,
to earn a good wage.
Concepción perked up a little at the thought. She told
herself that if she dreaded the prospect of being parted
from her daughter, it was only natural. It had taken her
this long to get used to Milagros’s being somebody’s wife.
Even now, she
wondered why this beautiful young woman, who’d had half the
boys in Las Cruces bewitched with her slim hips and shiny
black hair to her waist, her lively black eyes and
cheekbones worthy of a Mayan princess, had chosen to marry
Eduardo: a man ten
years older than she, who in Concepción’s view was no
prize. But there was nothing sensible about love, she knew.
Hadn’t she defied her own parents in marrying Gustavo?
Though she wished now that she had listened to them. Once
the enchantment had worn off, she’d seen Gustavo for what
he was: a man whose only love was for the bottle and who’d
preferred the company of easy women and borrachos like
himself to that of his wife. On the other hand, if she
hadn’t married him, she wouldn’t have borne this child who
was
more precious to her than anything in the world.
She gave Milagros a small, apologetic smile. “No escúchame,
mi corazón. I’m an old lady, sick at the thought of losing
her only child.”
“You? Old?” Milagros laughed. It was a well-known fact, she
went on to say, that Concepción could have her pick of the
unmarried men in the village. Why, just the other day,
Señor Vargas, from the abogado’s office, where Milagros
earned extra money cleaning nights and weekends, had been
asking after Concepción.
Concepción dismissed the notion that the widowed Vargas had
his eye on her, though she knew it to be true. He’d come
calling a few times when Milagros wasn’t around, blushing
like a schoolboy and tripping over his words. She’d
politely pretended not to notice, but she hadn’t encouraged
him, either. He was attractive enough, she supposed, and he
made a good living as a lawyer, but he wanted a wife, and
even though she was now free to marry—word having come,
five years ago, of Gustavo’s death, from drink, nearly two
decades after having run off to Culiacán with another woman—
she had no interest in doing so. At forty-three, Concepción
was done with all that. What had sweet-talking men,
with their mouths full of promises and hands offering
nothing but empty pleasures, ever brought her but
heartache? After Gustavo had run off, when Milagros was a
baby, Concepción had still been young and naive enough to
believe that she’d merely chosen badly the first time, that
with another man it would be different. But she’d been
wrong about that, too.
A year later, Angel had come into her life. Angel, with a
face to match his name and a smile like the noonday sun,
lighting up everything around him. He’d been new in town, a
stranger passing through on his way north to look for work.
He’d picked up a few days’ labor at the tannery, where
Concepción had been employed at the time, and it had been
love at first sight. Angel extended his stay from one week
to two,then indefinitely. They began seeing each other
outside work. Angel never showed up at her house empty-
handed, and though the gifts were modest—a handful of
wildflowers he’d picked, a dulce or a loaf of bread from
the panaderia, a small toy for Milagros—they might have
been diamonds and rubies as far as she was concerned. It
had been so long since she had even felt like a woman, much
less a desirable one, that she blossomed like a cactus in
the desert after a cloudburst. And how like gentle rain
were his words to her parched soul!
“Someday, when I have enough money saved, you and Milagros
will join me in America,” he would say as he dandled the
one-year-old Milagros on his knee, cooing to her,
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? For me to be your papi?”
Milagros had gurgled happily in response, while Concepción
had looked on with her heart full to bursting. Listening to
him talk of their future together, and seeing how tender he
was with her little girl, it had been easy to imagine a
life with him.
It wasn’t just words, either. He’d seduced her with his
hands and mouth as well, doing things to her in bed that
made her blush now to remember them.
But in the end, he, too, had broken her heart. Ironically,
she’d been on her way to church to ask Father Muñoz about
the possibility of an annulment, which would have left her
free to marry again, when she had run into her old friend
Esteban, whom she hadn’t seen in a while. They’d chatted
for a bit, and she’d happened to mention that they’d hired
a new fellow at the tannery, a man named Angel Menezes from
El Salto. Other than that, she’d given no indication that
she had any particular interest in Angel—she’d intended to
wait until after she’d spoken to the priest before making
their courtship known. But it was an idle remark for which
she’d paid dearly . . . and
which at the same time had saved her from certain
humiliation, or worse. For it turned out that Esteban had a
cousin in El Salto, and that was how Concepción had learned
that Angel already had a wife and child back home.
Esteban’s words had rendered her mute for a moment. She’d
felt as if she had been struck by lightning, standing there
in the village square under the cloudless blue sky. Then
she’d become aware of a hand on her arm and Esteban’s face
had loomed close, peering at her with concern. “Está bien?”
he’d inquired.
“Sí,” she’d lied. “Just a cramp in my leg. There, it’s
gone.” She’d forced a smile that felt hammered in place
before wishing him a good day and continuing on her way.
It was a blow from which she’d never fully recovered.
Since then, the gateway to her heart had remained fiercely
guarded. It wasn’t just that she was protecting herself
from being hurt; she’d also seen enough to know that
marriage wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Vargas’s
intentions toward her might be serious, and he might have a
big house and money in the bank, but those things didn’t
necessarily make for a good life. Concepción had spent the
better part of the past two decades observing the marriages
of those around her, noting how servile many of the wives
were with their husbands, watching their inner light dim a
little more with each passing year. Few of those wives were
as happy as on their wedding day, and none enjoyed the
freedom she did. Concepción regularly congratulated herself
on having chosen a different path, even though it hadn’t
been easy raising a child on her own. It was only on
occasion, late at night when she was feeling blue, or after
the rare glass of spirits, that she wondered if, in barring
the door to her heart, she was denying herself as much as
she was the men whom she kept at arm’s length.
Nonetheless, it secretly pleased her that she was still
considered desirable. The glow of youth may have faded, but
she hadn’t lost her looks. No threads of gray had invaded
her long, black hair, which she wore in a thick braid
coiled into a bun at the nape of her neck, and except for a
slight thickening about the waist, she was as slender as
her daughter.
The dirt road they were making their way down was on the
outskirts of town, the same one Concepción used to travel
in taking her daughter to school, only yesterday, it
seemed. It was lined with shanties, some with satellite
dishes sprouting absurdly from their corrugated roofs,
interspersed with the occasional open-air vendor, offering
the usual assortment of boxed and tinned goods: rust-
speckled cans of processed meat and fruit cocktail, Fanta
soft drinks, packets of crackers and cookies. Chickens
pecked in the dusty grass alongside the road, and two old
men perched on folding chairs in front of a taco stand,
playing checkers, nodded to her and Milagros in greeting as
they passed. Concepción smiled at several women she knew
who were on their way home from working the midnight shift
at the factory, their slumped shoulders and glazed eyes
telling an all-too-familiar tale of long hours without a
single day of rest. Even on Sundays, you were expected to
work, and though in theory you were free to take the day
off, those who’d been foolhardy enough to do so had
returned to work the following Monday to find that they’d
been replaced.
The factory was a godsend to the community in many ways,
Concepción thought. It provided much-needed jobs that, in
some cases, made the difference between starving and being
able to put food on the table. Yet she sometimes saw it as
more of a curse than a blessing, one that had them yoked
like oxen to a plow that was putting far more money into
the pockets of the rich Americana who owned it than into
theirs. Seeing it in the distance, a sprawling cinder-block
building, its corrugated roof glowing like a griddle in the
red glow of the rising sun, she found herself slowing, her
load growing a little heavier with each step.
She prayed that today would bring relief from the jefe’s
constant riding. For the past month, ever since production
had been brought to a near standstill for several crucial
weeks by a faulty piece of equipment, the boss, Señor
Perez, and his foreman had been on the workers like fleas
on a dog. They were given no breaks, except twice a day to
use the lavatory. Lunchtime had been reduced to a mere
fifteen minutes. And illness was no longer an excuse for
missing a day’s work. Last week, when Ana Saucedo had
complained of pains in her arms and chest, she’d been sent
home and told not to return.
But if there was grumbling among the ranks, no one had
dared to voice a complaint. They were all too afraid of
losing their jobs. It was hard work, yes, but it was work,
and the wages were decent compared to the pittance they
would have eked out elsewhere. And if the rich Americana
who employed them, known to them simply as the Señora, had
yet to show her face, her largesse was well-known. Weren’t
they reminded of it daily by Señor Perez? He seldom missed
an opportunity to tout the efficiency of their modern
equipment and their “unheard-of ” wages, which he claimed
were absurdly generous compared to
those at other manufacturing plants. All this while he
cracked the whip and docked the pay of anyone reckless
enough to sneak off for a quick smoke or an unauthorized
visit to the lavatory.
They arrived just as the air horn let out an ear-splitting
blast, announcing the start of their shift. They were
punching their time cards when Ida Morales, a plump older
woman who made it her business to know everyone else’s,
sidled up to Milagros.
“What, no baby yet? Someone should tell that husband of
yours he’d do better filling his wife’s belly than getting
rich up North,” she teased, patting Milagros’s flat
stomach.
“I’ll tell him myself when I see him. Which will be soon,”
replied Milagros with a carefree toss of her head.
Concepción knew, though, from the color blooming in her
daughter’s cheeks, that she’d taken the old busybody’s
comment to heart. No one was more eager for a child than
Milagros. It was just one more thing she’d had to defer.
“The sooner, the better. A wife without a husband to look
after her is a recipe for trouble. Look what happened to
poor Maria Salazar.” Ida clucked her tongue at the fate of
the unfortunate Maria, who’d taken up with another man
while her husband was up North looking for work. By the
time he’d returned home, Maria had been heavy with a child
that wasn’t his. Some had said that it was a blessing she’d
lost the baby at birth.
Concepción brushed past Ida, suddenly in a hurry to get to
her station. Talk of losing babies always seemed to her a
bad omen, and she protectively made the sign of the cross.
Bent over her sewing machine, she quickly settled into a
rhythm. If the work had one advantage, it was that it was
unchanging, hour upon hour of stitching the exact same
seam on the exact same length of cloth, one after another,
the ceaseless rhythm allowing her mind to drift. Even the
noise of a hundred sewing machines whirring simultaneously
at
a deafening pitch, punctuated by the mechanical thump and
whuff of the steam presses, became tolerable after a while.
She ceased to notice, too, the closeness of the air,
swarming with particles of dust and fabric, and the bits of
thread stuck to every part of her. (When she was an old
woman, long retired, Concepción didn’t doubt, she’d still
be plucking stray threads from her hair and clothing.)
It came as a jolt to her senses when the noontime whistle
sounded. She and Milagros took their lunch outdoors with
the others, seated cross-legged on the grass feasting on
the
sopas and pollo tinga that she’d brought from home. Just as
greedily, Concepción drank in the open air, which, even
with the sun high in the sky, was like a cool mountain
breeze compared to the stifling atmosphere indoors. Before
she knew it, it was time to head back to her station.
Concepción rose with a sigh, brushing crumbs from her lap.
She was six hours into her ten-hour shift when she caught
the first whiff of smoke. At first she took little notice
of it. Probably just Candelaria Esperanza sneaking a
cigarette, she thought. Candelaria had been reprimanded
twice before for the same offense. But the odor quickly
intensified, turning acrid, and when she looked up from her
sewing, she saw that the air was hazy with smoke.
Concepción dropped the cloth she was stitching and leaped
to her feet in alarm.
Just then, she heard a shrill voice cry, “Fire!”
The factory erupted in chaos. Workers cried out in panic as
each person scrambled for the nearest exit. Concepción
strained to catch a glimpse of Milagros amid the thickening
smoke, but all she could see was a writhing mass of limbs.
She stumbled off in the direction of Milagros’s station,
coughing from the smoke that filled her lungs and calling
out her
daughter’s name until she was hoarse.
Amid the frantic cries of those around her, she could hear
the sound of fists hammering futilely against the exit
doors. Ever since the step-up in production, the jefe had
kept them chained shut during work hours to prevent
slackers from slipping outside for unauthorized breaks. In
all the confusion, no one had thought to unlock them.
Concepción was gripped with a paralyzing panic. They were
all going to die, trapped in here like rats! But a part of
her, the part that had refused to give up in the wake of
all the tragedies she’d endured thus far— the deaths of
both her parents, the stillborn babies before Milagros, and
the betrayals by her husband and Angel—came to the fore
now, commanding her sharply to remain calm. If she
succumbed to panic, she might very well die. And she would
be of no use to her daughter dead.
Without stopping to think, she snatched a half-sewn
pillowcase from a basket on the floor. Holding it over her
nose and mouth to filter out the worst of the smoke, she
forged on in search of her daughter. But even with a layer
of protection, each breath was a searing attack on her
lungs. Worse was the panic clawing inside her like a caged
beast. It was all she could do to stay focused on her goal
of finding her daughter and, if need be, guiding her to
safety. For Milagros, she would have headed straight into
the flames of hell.
And hell was where she appeared to be right now. Amid the
ever-thickening smoke, she could now see flames leaping,
orange tongues licking greedily at the piled-up scraps of
fabric
around her. As she stumbled blindly about, her eyes burning
and the tiny hairs on her arms crackling with the heat, the
cool voice of reason in her head instructed her to get down
on her hands and knees. Then she was crawling over the
concrete floor, where the smoke wasn’t quite so dense. She
negotiated her way through a thicket of table legs and the
iron pedestal of a steam press, as big around as a tree
trunk. Dimly through the smoke, she could see the people
gathered by the nearest exit, men and women bawling like
frightened cattle as they kicked and pounded in an effort
to batter down the door. A chair sailed by overhead, and
she heard the shattering of glass as a window gave way. But
the windows were all secured from the outside by wire mesh,
so it was to no avail: The desperate move only succeeded in
letting in a gust of air that sent the flames ever higher.
Concepción gasped for breath, fearing for her own life now.
Long ago, after burying the last of her stillborn babies—a
little boy—she had imagined that she would welcome death.
At the time, she’d had nothing to live for but a husband
who’d stagger home from bars only to impregnate her with
yet another baby that wouldn’t survive to draw its first
breath. But that had been before Milagros. The day she’d
become a mother to a perfect, healthy child, she’d begun to
see death as the enemy. The one time Concepción had been
seriously ill, after a cut on her foot had become badly
infected, she’d had but one thought in her head: Who will
raise my daughter if I die? And that alone had been enough
to send her crawling from her sickbed, gritting her teeth
from the pain as she’d
hobbled off to see to her child.
Now she sent up a prayer—Ayudame, Dios!—that she would find
Milagros among those clamoring at the exit. For it seemed
that hope wasn’t lost after all. Amid all the shouting, she
heard the rattle of a chain, followed by the sound of metal
scraping over concrete as the door was shoved open.
At that moment, she faded from consciousness. In some
distant recess of her mind, she was dimly aware of a hand
roughly grabbing her by the arm and dragging her across
the floor. The next thing she knew, she was outside, lying
on the ground, staring up at the sky and gulping in fresh
air. Her eyes and lungs burned, and the flesh on one side
of her body was scraped raw. All around her, people in
similar states
of dishevelment and confusion lay sprawled on the ash-
strewn grass. Others wandered aimlessly about, their eyes
staring whitely from soot-grimed faces as they watched the
factory, and their livelihoods, go up in flames.
Concepción ran from one person to the next, crying
hoarsely, “Have you seen my daughter?”
No one had seen Milagros.
No one knew where she was.
At last she came across the jefe, looking on in dull-eyed
disbelief as the whole rear section of the building
collapsed in a shower of sparks. Señor Perez didn’t look so
puffed up with self-importance now; he looked more like a
wet rooster, with
his oily hair in strings and sweat pasting his khaki shirt
to his fat belly.
Concepción seized his arm. “Did everyone get out?”
Woodenly, he shook his head in response. “Espero que sí.” I
hope so. The words only heightened her fear. He didn’t have
to add that anyone still inside would have perished by now.
Still, she clung to the hope that Milagros was alive. Maybe
she was wandering about in a daze somewhere nearby.
Concepción prayed to God that it was so as she hurried off
to continue her search.
But the God to whom she’d prayed wasn’t the God of mercy,
as it turned out. He was the same heartless God who had
taken all her other children. Once the fire was under
control and a head count taken, it was determined that all
the workers had made it to safety. All but one. By the time
the body was recovered, it was barely recognizable as human
remains.
Immediately after the funeral, Concepción took to her bed.
Her days became a dark tunnel through which she passed
without any sense of time or purpose. Concerned neighbors
brought food, for which she had no appetite. They lit
candles, which
burned unheeded. She neglected to bathe, and the glossy
black hair in which she’d once taken pride grew dull
andmatted. One day, she happened to glance in the mirror
and was startled to see a stranger looking back at her—a
crazy lady, a bruja. She attempted to draw a comb through
her hair, but it was too tangled. So she took a pair of
scissors and hacked it all off instead.
Dios, why didn’t you take me instead? she cried inwardly.
In time, the grieving mother began to wonder if the reason
she was still alive was because God wasn’t done with her
yet. Perhaps He had a purpose for her. It wasn’t until
Señor Perez came to call one day that she discovered what
that purpose was.
She looked at the jefe seated across from her, his hair
slicked back and his fleshy fingers splayed over his knees.
It might have been the heat causing him to perspire, but
for some reason he appeared nervous, as though he found her
presence unsettling. And why wouldn’t he? She herself would
have run from anyone who looked as she did. She was a
wraith, alive only in the corporeal sense, her hair, what
was left of it, sticking out in clumps and her sunken eyes
like two nails pounded into her death mask of a face.
The jefe handed her an envelope. Inside was a thick sheaf
of bills. “The Señora wants you to know how very sorry she
is for your loss, as are we all.” He was quick to add, “And
though she is under no obligation to do so, she was good
enough to insist on my giving you this, to cover the cost
of the funeral as well as any lost wages.”
For a long moment, Concepción merely sat there staring
wordlessly at the envelope full of bills before she passed
it back to Perez. “Tell her she can keep her money,” she
said with contempt. “I don’t want it.”
Perez appeared at a loss. He’d clearly never encountered
anyone who’d refused such a large sum of money. “Now,
señora, let’s not be hasty. It may be some time before
you’re able to return to work, and in the meantime you’ll
need—”
“I don’t need anything from you or the Señora,” she cut him
off.
He licked his lips nervously. “I assure you, the Señora is
only acting out of the goodness of her heart,” he insisted,
addressing Concepción as if she were a willful child he was
attempting to reason with. “But if you need more than this,
perhaps I can—”
“This isn’t about money.”
Something in her expression must have told him it wasn’t
just the talk of a woman too unhinged by grief to know what
was good for her, because she heard the wariness in his
voice as he inquired, with false solicitude, “What is it
you want, then?”
She looked him hard in the eye. “Justice.”
Seeing that this unfortunate matter wasn’t going to be
settled easily, Perez began to sweat in earnest. “You don’t
know what you’re saying.
You’re beside yourself. Perhaps I should come back another
time, when we can talk about this more sensibly.”
He got up as if to leave but was instantly brought to a
halt when she commanded sharply, “Sientate! We will talk
now.” She might appear crazy, but in fact, she was thinking
clearly for the first time in weeks. “You can start by
explaining why there has been no investigation.”
He shrugged, spreading his fat-fingered hands in a helpless
gesture. “It was an accident. What more is there to say?”
As she leaned toward him, she had the small satisfaction of
watching him shrink from her. “The fire might have been an
accident, but my daughter’s death was not. You are
responsible, Perez.” She jabbed a finger in his
direction. “You and the Señora, whose praises you are so
quick to sing. You had us penned in like cattle, with no
regard for our welfare. No, even cattle are treated more
humanely.”
He sighed heavily, reaching into his pocket for a
handkerchief with which to mop his perspiring
brow. “Whatever mistakes were made, they weren’t
intentional,” he hedged by way of apology. “What good would
it do to bring more trouble when
there has already been so much?”
“In other words, I should just keep my mouth shut,” she
said.
“No one is suggesting you don’t have a right to be upset.
But-
“I would like the Señora to look me in the eye” she said
scornfully, not letting him finish, “and tell me how sorry
she is for my loss.”
“Be reasonable,” Perez cajoled. “She’s a busy woman. You
can’t possibly expect her to come all this way. Besides, if
you stir up trouble, you’ll only make it worse for us all.
Our people depend on the Señora to put food on the table.
Think what a
disaster it would be if you forced her to rebuild somewhere
else.”
But Concepción wasn’t swayed. She knew he was only playing
on her sympathies in order to protect himself. “In that
case, you leave me no choice but to go to her.” With a
determination that gave her renewed strength, she rose to
her feet, letting
him know he was dismissed. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Señor
Perez, I have business to attend to.”
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