The Santiago Sisters. Victoria Fox
at the foot of the track seemed alive, pulsing in the moonlight, lit up like a pearl. She returned to her own bed, her heart thundering.
I’ll get away from here one day. I’ll make Mama proud. I’ll be rich and successful and all the things she wants me to be. Then I’ll have done something right.
Comforted by this, Teresa reached for Fortune’s Lover and read it beneath the blankets for a while, until her arm started to ache from holding the torch.
When at last she surrendered to sleep, the story grasped for her unconscious and, in her dreams, she walked through the farm gate and kept on walking.
She dreamed of billionaires and red carpets, of palaces and yachts, of sparkling blue swimming pools and satin purses stuffed with notes.
She dreamed of the elusive heroes of her mother’s novels, their shirts crisp and parted at the collar. So unlike any of the men she had encountered, these men were of a different breed, exotic and treacherous and holding out for her.
He arrived on a day in July, when the sky and earth and everything in between was enhanced, as if she was looking at it through her camera lens and could draw it into sharper focus. All week they had drowned in a storm—angry, grinding clouds dousing the soil and filling the lakes—and now it had cleared the air was silver-fresh.
Calida was inside. The door, loose on its hinges, trembled gently within its frame. She heard him before she saw him—the heavy bag that fell from his shoulders and hit the soil, the deep, single cough—and the sound of a man took her by surprise. It was a year since Diego’s death. At first, illogically, she thought it might be him.
‘Hello,’ she said, stepping on to the porch.
The stranger was standing at the wooden gate, his back to her. Paco the horse was nuzzling the palm of his hand, and the way he leaned into the animal, and the animal into him, struck Calida as secretive and rare. When he turned, she caught it in stages: the lifting head, the profile, the crease in one cheek as he smiled. He was in front of the sun, making his hair blonder and his face darker, though his eyes shone like bursts of blue water on the arid steppe. He was taller than her, lean and muscular. He wore a grey T-shirt, the kind that’s been used so much it becomes soft to touch, and faded blue jeans. The jeans were tucked into cow-leather gaucho riding boots.
‘Señorita Santiago?’
He had a sure voice. Paco responded to it, nudging the stranger with his muzzle. A weird thing was happening to Calida’s tongue. It seemed soldered to the roof of her mouth. She tried to unstick it.
‘I’m here for the work,’ he explained. ‘I saw your ad.’
On her mama’s instruction, Calida had pasted the fliers up months ago. Calida wasn’t sure what she had expected—certainly not for someone to turn up out of nowhere, without warning, someone who looked like this: certainly not him.
‘My name’s Daniel Cabrera.’ He put out his hand.
She experimented with the words in her head. The surname sounded like a kiss and a dance, maybe both at once. She took his hand. It was cool and strong.
‘I got talking with Señor Más at the market and he said you were still looking for help. I figured it was better to come straight out here and meet you in person …’
She nodded. Speak, for God’s sake! Say anything!
‘I’m Calida,’ she offered at last.
Daniel’s smile widened. She guessed he was seventeen, maybe eighteen. His forearms arrested her—the colour of them: a deep tan; and powerful—on the outside was a scattering of light, fair hair, and on the tender skin closest to his body a strong vein was visible. His wrists were thick, and around one he wore a leather band.
‘Your home is amazing,’ he said.
‘Gracias.’
‘It’s quite the legend in town, Calida.’ How come no one else could make her name sound like that? ‘People look out at this land. They can’t believe one family owns it all. It would be a privilege to be out here every day, with you.’
Every day … with you … Calida blushed. Her eyes darted to the ground.
‘Beautiful horses,’ he said. ‘I used to work on an estancia in the south—rides for tourists, that kind of thing. I grew up with animals—they’re my family.’
Calida struggled for something to say. If Teresita were here, she’d have no trouble talking. ‘What about your real family?’ she blurted, and instantly knew she’d said the wrong thing. Daniel’s face, formerly so open and friendly, fell into shadow.
‘They live in Europe,’ he said. ‘Where I’m from.’
‘Oh.’ There was a pause.
He was looking directly at her. ‘Calida, is your mother in?’
Just like that, the illusion of her maturity was shattered. Of course Daniel saw her as a kid: she was only thirteen, even if sometimes she felt twice that age.
‘She’s indoors,’ said Calida. ‘I’ll take you to her.’
He smiled a smile she would carry with her forever. ‘Thanks,’ he said.
Daniel Cabrera got the job. Julia took one look at him and hired him on the spot.
‘A good solid man about the place,’ she said, brushing her hair for the first time in weeks. Calida noticed how her mama’s eyes lit up when Daniel walked in, and how she kept playing with her hair and erupting into light, tinkling laughs.
‘She likes him,’ Calida confided in her sister.
Teresita was unfazed. ‘You’re only mad because you like him too …’
‘I do not!’
‘Liar.’
‘Cállate, shut up!’
‘I’ve seen how red you go.’ Teresita put on a silly voice and danced around: ‘Oh, Daniel, you’re so handsome! You’re so perfect! I think I love you, Daniel!’
Calida smiled in spite of herself. ‘You’re an idiot.’ But she couldn’t help her blush—and she couldn’t think of anything else to say except to repeat her protest, but the more she repeated it, the more it exposed that Teresita was right. Daniel Cabrera occupied her thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Whenever she was alone, she pictured his arms around her, his golden head bowed to hers and his warm breath on her neck. They stayed like that in her imagination, just still, unsure how the moment moved on. Calida felt there was more, but it was reckless and adult and she didn’t understand it, and to feel his embrace, if only in her mind, was, for the moment, enough.
But it wasn’t Julia she should have been afraid of. It was her twin.
‘Daniel should move into the outhouse,’ said Teresita, after supper one night.
She delivered the suggestion with a careful insouciance that immediately rang alarm bells. Calida looked up, tried to find a way into her sister’s countenance but, as happened so often lately, she could not. Her heart quickened. Teresita took a tight sip of her drink and in that moment she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. They had been twins too long. Her sister wanted him, too.
‘There’s running water out there,’ Teresita went on, ‘and he could come up to the house for food. I’d like to have him close all the time … Wouldn’t you, Calida?’
Teresita’s eyes met hers, but, instead of the reassurance she’d been hoping for—that the proposition was for Calida’s benefit, a selfless act made in knowledge of her devotion—instead she met a dead-on challenge. Teresita’s gaze was one of sheer resolve.