“Sad?” he asked. “They just want Easter candy.”
Oddly, women wore colorful dresses and had decorated their stands with flowers, red, white, and green crepe streamers, and matching flags. With trash bins full of paper plates and plastic Solo Cups, it almost looked as if we were arriving at the end of an event.
“Pull over,” Cristiano said, and the driver Cristiano parked at a curb close to the square. Cristiano opened his door and strode toward a woman who was removing dresses from hangers and folding them into a crate.
When she noticed him coming, she stepped back, waving him away. He held something out to her, grabbed her hand and pressed it into her palm, then squatted before a yellow blanket displaying leather huarache sandals.
I had no idea what he was doing, but the woman clearly objected to it.
Cristiano headed back, his dress shirt dotted with raindrops. He slid in next to me and passed over a pair of brown leather sandals. “These will be more comfortable,” he said.
I took them because I didn’t know what else to do. Turning them over in my hands, I admired the detailed craftsmanship and high-quality leather. He stared ahead as we continued on and didn’t look as if he expected a “thank you.”
“These are well-made,” I said. “They look expensive.”
“Maricela is highly skilled. I’ve told her to charge more, but she refuses, so I gave her double.”
“You paid her?”
“Of course.” He glanced over as I ran a fingertip along the thin soles. “They remind me of the ones you were wearing . . . the ones you had as a girl.”
Ah. Yes. I pinched the smooth leather strap. These were an understated, adult version of the woven huaraches I’d worn until the leather had been darkened by dirt and sun, and the frayed straps had started to come loose. “My mom hated them. She said—” I stopped myself. I’d been wearing those sandals the day I’d found Cristiano in her bedroom as she’d lain dying on the floor.
“What did she say?” he asked.
“Nothing.” Cristiano didn’t deserve to share in my past, however trivial. I bent over to pull on sandals like the ones I’d worn so ragged, my mom had called them a step up from bare feet. “It was nothing.”
The car wound up the mountainside and turned onto the circular driveway of Cristiano’s house. Upon closer inspection, the white, Spanish Colonial-style home had wrought-iron window grilles, and a stone walkway that led to a massive, arched, dark wood door. “You don’t have a gate?” I asked as we parked. Anyone from town could hike up to his front door.
“Wait here,” he said, taking his jacket from the seat and exiting the car.
I turned away from the house to peer beyond the cliff it sat on. Clay rooftops, stone buildings, greenery, and desert comprised the town. Businesses and activity gathered in the middle, around the main street we’d driven down, and from there spiraled off pockets of neighborhoods.
A slim woman with delicate, elfin features and long, reddish-brown hair descended the front steps to meet Cristiano. He handed her his jacket, touched her shoulder, and gestured to the car. She twirled her considerable hair into a bun on top of her head as she nodded before walking to the trunk.
Cristiano opened the door to the backseat and offered a hand to help me out. “This is Jazmín,” he said as I unfolded from the Land Rover. “She’ll see that your things are handled.”
The woman and I met eyes. She was indisputably pretty and close to my age. How had she gotten here? I studied her for any signs of mistreatment. In clean, pressed black pants and a white button-down, and with no outward signs of trauma, she almost seemed normal.
Jazmín bent her head toward me. “Bienvenida, señora.”
“I can get my own bags,” I told Cristiano. “She doesn’t need to do that.”
“Jaz has been preparing for you the last couple days,” he said.
I tucked some of my hair behind my ear and straightened my dress. Even with the low-heeled sandals, the hem just barely grazed the ground. “Why am I wearing this?” I asked.
Cristiano glanced from me to Jazmín. “I apologize. Natalia seems to have forgotten her manners.”
My cheeks warmed. I hadn’t responded when she’d welcomed me, and she wasn’t the enemy. “Mucho gusto,” I said to her as she removed my bag from the trunk and slung my mother’s dress over her elbow.
Cristiano led me up the steps to the sturdy wood-and-iron door. The tiled entryway had high ceilings with dark beams and round-top windows that would’ve lit the space if the sun had been out. Instead, a chandelier made of wrought iron glowed above us and matched the railing of a staircase with blue and orange painted risers.
Jaz entered behind us. “We had to move everyone into the dining hall because of the rain.” She gave him a small smile. “It’s a little cramped, but they don’t notice.”