“Good morning,” I called out, expecting the solemn nod he usually gave people instead of verbally returning the greeting.
“What’s good about it?” he muttered.
I kept walking towards my destination, deciding not to let him or anyone else ruin my birthday. At the pig pen, a very remote area covered with leafy trees behind the horse stables, my tired hands sat the bucketful of slop on the ground that my mother had handed to me before I stepped out of the Big House.
The three medium-sized pinkish-toned pigs ambled quickly towards me once they saw me coming and grunted their joy. They knew I was the one who fed them, and they recognized me from a distance. As I started unloading the food from the outside of the pen onto their trough, the pigs squealed with frenzied sounds. I glanced over at the emptiness of the huge pen. Don Clemencio had just sold the rest of the pigs—all twenty of them and only left three so they could reproduce. With the exception of his family and maybe not even them, everything and everybody on the hacienda was expendable. We added up to nothing but pesos and cents to him, that’s all.
“Hi, Tina,” a voice behind me said.
I didn’t need to turn around to know who it belonged to. “Hi,” I returned, smiling.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Lucio informed me, standing so close that I could smell the scent of the strong soap he bathed with.
I took a small step away, not being able to handle being so close to him. “What can I do for you?”
He put his hand in the pocket of his trousers and took out a small box. “Happy birthday, Tina.”
I stared at the pretty box not knowing what to say as he handed it to me. Seeing that I wasn’t responding, he took my right hand, his touch filling me with a tingling sensation I had never felt before, and placed the box on my palm. I was still trying to recover from his fingers touching mine, the exact feel of his skin and the tingles bubbling out of me, when he cleared his throat. He also seemed to be trying to find his own balance.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” he asked eagerly.
I quickly looked around, making sure that even though we were well hidden by the trees and the stable, no one was lurking anywhere. Satisfied, I opened the box. My fingers slowly pulled out a golden necklace until a delicate, shimmering heart-shaped pendant dangled from it. The sun’s heated rays caught every facet of light from the pure gold in the piece. I had never owned such a valuable object.
“Do you like it?” Lucio asked anxiously.
I finally found the words in a mouth dry with surprise. “Who wouldn’t like something like this? But I can’t accept it.”
“Why?” he asked, flabbergasted.
“Why?! Lucio, you’re better off giving this necklace to the pigs. Your parents would prefer it.”
“I already told you, Tina, I don’t care what my parents think.”
“How much did the necklace cost?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter,” he stated, frustrated.
“But—“
“It. Doesn’t. Matter,” he emphasized.
“Why do you want to give me something so valuable?”
He frowned deeply. “It isn’t valuable,” he insisted. “It’s a thing but I want you to have it because it represents my heart and I’m giving it to you.”
“Lucio,” I blurted with surprise.
But he didn’t say any more as he brought his mouth to mine. His fleshy lips gently taught me to respond to him as I received my first kiss. And I melted into the moment, keeping my worries at bay, keeping his nearness close to me, keeping my hands tightly wrapped around the golden heart he had just given me. I could feel my breathing catch itself in uneven strokes.
When we finally pulled away from each other, I put my hand, the one wrapped around the pendant, to my throat. The hot metal of the heart from the heat of my palm burned me, but I refused to let it go.
“I hope it’s clear to you how much I love you, Tina,” he announced, his words sure of themselves, demanding an immediate response back.
“This is impossible,” I declared.
He shook his head with frustration. “Don’t say that.”
“Lucio, our love for each other can’t survive.”
“So you do love me,” he blurted, his familiar playful grin back on his lips.
“Lucio, that’s not the point.”
“Of course it is,” he stated, chuckling. “You love me—tell me again! Tell me, tell me, tell me!”
“Lucio,” I chided, my eyes nervously darting around us but it was just us and the pigs. They were still busy with eating their slop.
“I’m so happy, Tina.”
“Lucio come into reality,” I demanded.
He took my face in his gentle hands as his dark eyes went deep into mine. “Reality? The only reality that’s important is that I love you, and you love me.”
“But what can we do with this love?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “Where can it go?”
“It’ll go where we want it to go.”
“Lucio, we’re dreaming.”
“Then let’s not wake up.”
“But—“
“We’ll stay in our dreams.”
“I really don’t see how this is going to work.”
“We’ll figure it out, Tina,” he declared with his playful grin in place. “What we have inside of us is stronger than whatever is against us on the outside.”
Chapter 18: Valentina
I wore the heart necklace underneath my blouses where no one would be able to see it. We hid our secrets well, those quiet talks with each other, those meaningful glances, those stolen kisses. Even when the flowers stopped coming—because I imagined Lucio would’ve wanted to make sure we weren’t found out—still I knew two people suspected us.
One was his grouchy childhood mate, Leonardo. His stony silences and awkward presence unnerved me. He was nearly impossible to ignore even when he rarely spoke. Skulking around and always scowling, he stood out wherever he was at.
“How can you stand him?” I had once asked Lucio.
Lucio kissed my cheek. “You’re too hard on poor Leonardo.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You are.”
“I just don’t understand how you can get along with him. Your personality is the opposite of his. You’re light and he’s a shadow.” While they had exactly the same coloring, dark eyes and dark hair, Leonardo seemed much darker somehow.
“He’s different when you get to know him,” Lucio stated.
My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “He is?”
“He’s very loyal and very kind.”
“Kind?” I asked, trying not to trip on Lucio’s word for Leonardo.
“Yes, he’s got a big heart.”
“Really?” I asked, still having trouble believing Lucio. “Because it sure doesn’t seem like it. Honestly, starving hogs are a lot less obnoxious than him.”
Lucio chuckled. “I know he can be a little abrasive.”
“A little abrasive? No, he can be much worse than that.”
“There’s a reason for his rough personality.”
“There is?”
“He’s had a sad life.”
I remembered once hearing that Leonardo’s parents had died in a freak hay riding accident. The horse saw a snake and went crazy, and Leonardo was left with his uncle. “Having your parents die when you’re so young must be one of the cruelest turns of fate.”
Lucio nodded solemnly. “I can’t even imagine what that’s like—to be left by yourself without your parents and without brothers and sisters.”
“An orphan,” I murmured, the words catching in my throat.
“You know, his uncle really didn’t want to take him in.”
“He didn’t?” I asked, surprised. This was the first I had heard of it.
“Father Mateo threatened to excommunicate Mr. Velasquez if he didn’t.”
“I didn’t know. Leonardo
never talks about himself.”
“He doesn’t like to talk.”
“He’s very strange,” I stated.
“You just don’t know him.”
It was true. I didn’t and I didn’t want to get to know him. He was too odd for my liking—wearing the impenetrable mask every day and barely saying two words to anybody. But Lucio must’ve been right about his loyalty because even when I was sure he knew about us, being Lucio’s best buddy, he didn’t give away our secret.
The other person who suspected about us was my own mother. Very little escaped her watchful eyes, and I caught her eyeing Lucio and then me a few times. She finally broke down and spoke to me about it one evening at home when my father was still at work.
“I don’t like the way Lucio looks at you,” she told me, her hands on her hips. “Like a coyote ogles a chicken.”
“What?” I asked nervously.
“You look at him too,” she chided. “Something is very wrong.”
“Mama—“
“Something is very, very wrong, and I’m not just talking about a few horses wandering outside the corral.”
“But Mama—“
“Stop,” she demanded, putting her hand up. “Don’t say anything because I’m sure you’re about to lie to me. Lie! Just listen to your mother.”
“What do you want tell me?” I said softly, relieved that I didn’t have to make anything up. I didn’t like disrespecting my parents that way.
She took in a few breaths and gathered her thoughts as I braced myself. “This thing that he feels for you,” she continued, her voice shaky and upset, “and that you feel for him can’t work. It can’t!”
“Mama—“
“Listen, Valentina. Listen to me! I don’t have to tell you what’s against you. You already know you’ll never be accepted by his family or his class.”
“Are you saying that I’ll never be good enough for him?”
“I’m not saying that,” she stated strongly.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that he’ll never be good enough for you,” my mother announced. “He comes from a different world and he’ll never understand you—not really. You may not know this about yourself yet, but one day you’ll see the importance of not just feelings but of someone reaching inside of you, of someone knowing you.”
That was all my mother said to me, those haunting words I couldn’t comprehend. What did she mean about Lucio not knowing me? Of course he knew who I was. We belonged to different worlds, but our hearts belonged to one, didn’t they? But everything I knew was about to be turned upside down. The dream I was living in, the happy illusion, was about to implode. My sixteenth year was fast approaching when everything would change.
Everything.
Chapter 19
Before waking Valeria up, Dr. O’Leary decided on a strategy to keep Valeria from questioning why she couldn’t recall anything from the past few sessions. Dr. O’Leary had her go over her near drowning in this lifetime in vivid detail so that she could have a conscious recollection of some kind. Dr. O’Leary still wasn’t prepared to tell her about the other memories coming up until she could find a logical explanation for what seemed to be a movie running in her patient’s mind.
“That near drowning really did me in,” Valeria said. “Those details were excruciating.”
“No wonder you blocked them out.”
“I realize why I couldn’t remember them.”
“The mind can be very protective of its owner.”
“I’m going to talk to my mother about the details.”
“That’s a good idea,” stated Dr. O’Leary.
As soon as Valeria stepped out to the waiting room to make her next appointment, Dr. O’Leary slumped down in her chair. Was she doing the right thing in not telling Valeria yet? Was she justifying why she wouldn’t? Was she really doing it for Valeria or was she doing it for herself so that no one would find out and call her a quack. It was all so confusing. Time, I need time on this one, she told herself.
That evening Kate and Enzo sat up in bed reading books. He was the one actually reading while she tried to keep her fractured concentration on the novel about spies in foreign and mystical lands. After her fantastical afternoon, it was hard keeping her focus on a book with a fiction that dimmed by comparison to what was happening in real life.
She couldn’t help certain thoughts from creeping into her head in what should’ve been her leisure time. How could reincarnation really exist? Even with Valentina’s story full of description, how could it possibly be true?
But . . .
But Valeria’s memories seemed so real. And if there was such a thing as reincarnation then it would mean that Lindsey was still out there.
Somewhere.
She would see her best friend again.
Chapter 20: Valentina
After taking my picture a few days before my birthday, my parents and I stood outside the photographer’s store in town. It was an emotional time. I’d have the first picture of myself! Only because my parents were good friends with the picture taker were we able to afford it. Otherwise, there wasn’t any way we could pay for such an extravagant thing.
People walked on the dusty road in front of us, some going to the small white, stucco church just a short distance from where we were and others on their way to their homes or other places. Majestic homes lined the streets not too far from where the busy stores bustled with business, and carriages and horses littered the pathways.
“Sometimes, I think back on when you almost drowned . . .” my mother said with a broken voice as tears bubbled in her eyes.
I patted her back. “But nothing happened to me.”
“Thank goodness for Leonardo,” my father declared.
“You mean Lucio,” I corrected him. “Lucio saved my life.”
“Your mother told me it was Leonardo who did it,” my father said, puzzled.
“It was,” affirmed my mother.
“What?” I asked.
“Leonardo saved your life.”
I shook my head. “Mama, you’re remembering it wrong. It was Lucio who pulled me out of the water and not Leonardo.”
“Is that all you remember?” my mother asked, her voice slightly chastising.
“What do you mean? Lucio pulled me out of the water and took me home.”
You don’t remember Leonardo jumping into the water?”
“That didn’t happen,” I insisted.
“Leonardo jumped in the water and held you up so Lucio could pull you out. How do you not remember that?”
“That couldn’t have happened,” I blurted, staying firm.
“It could’ve and it did,” my mother declared.
“I was there. I should know how it happened. Who could’ve told you such a twisted lie?”
“Leonardo,” my father said matter-of-factly.
My eyebrows knit together. “Leonardo?”
“After Lucio brought you home and I made you take a nap to calm you, Leonardo visited. He wanted to know how you were doing after the accident.”
“How did he find out about what happened?”
My mother shook her head in exasperation. “I already told you that he was the one who jumped in the water and held you up.”
“But—“
“He didn’t tell me about it—not at first. You know how quiet that boy is, but I noticed a gash on his arm and that his clothes were wet. When I asked him about it, he said it was nothing, but then I figured it out. How do you think you made it to the side of the river?”
“I don’t know—maybe luck?” I announced.
“No, it wasn’t luck,” my mother proclaimed.
“It was la Virgen de Guadalupe.”
My mother nodded. “The virgin definitely sent Leonardo to you.”
“That river is very treacherous when it’s full of water,” my father affirmed, his voice shaky. “I don??
?t want to even imagine what would’ve happened to you if Leonardo hadn’t been around.”
“I practically had to force him to tell me what had happened,” my mother asserted. “He and Lucio heard you screaming, and he jumped in the water. He cut himself on a jagged rock but managed to get you to where Lucio was. While Lucio pulled you out, he got himself out of the river. You don’t remember this?”
“No,” I mumbled, still trying to comprehend the story.
“I know we’ve never talked about it because I don’t like to relive bad moments,” my mother explained, “but I always assumed you knew who had really saved your life.”
I shook my head absentmindedly. “I didn’t know.”
As we headed back to the hacienda, thoughts jabbed into me. I forced my mind to go back to that calamitous day and squeezed every terrifying moment out of it. A foggy memory that had been kept in the dark too long started finally emerging. I could feel someone’s hands behind me, but I had ignored them for the hands that had reached out to me. Why hadn’t I ever realized it? How could I have been so inconsiderate, so blind in not giving credit to the true hero of the story?
Chapter 21: Valentina
When my parents and I stepped into the Big House after finishing our business in town with the photographer, It was fluttering with energy. The Montenegros had just arrived—close friends of the Sevillas whose acquaintance went back generations in Don Clemencio’s family. They had lineage that could’ve been traced to the royalty in Spain, according to rumors. They owned the hacienda next to the Sevillas but had neglected it when they had moved to Europe. Now they were back, and Doña Renata complained incessantly about what a horrible condition their hacienda was in.
“I don’t know how I’m going to live in that pig’s sty,” she chafed.
“We’ll have it fixed soon enough,” Don Timoteo declared, annoyed by his wife’s ranting. He seemed to much prefer the company of Doña Clotilde than his own complaining spouse.
Meanwhile, I set aside the churning thoughts from the revelation earlier and took to attending the new family. I had plenty to do since they would be staying at the Sevilla Hacienda while their own was getting readied. Mr. and Mrs. Montenegro had three daughters and I rushed from one to another helping them dress and get their hair done.