“Do you smell that?” I said.
Franco tucked his shirt back inside his trousers with hasty motions.
“Franco, what did you do with your cigarette?” I looked around for mine, but I’d left it downstairs, hadn’t I?
He paced the room. “I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid all these years. Dreaming about you. Believing that one day you’d be mine. To think that I would’ve done anything for you! Soy un imbécil.”
What had I done with my cigarette? There had been an ashtray downstairs, on top of the end table, but I couldn’t remember putting it there. And what about Franco? When we came upstairs, he didn’t have his cigarette, either.
I jumped out of bed and opened the bedroom door. Flames and smoke emerged from the first story and fanned up to the ceiling. I screamed.
On impulse, I shut the door. The blue smoke filtered into the room through the gap between the door and the floor. Holy Mother, the entire house was made out of wood!
“The window!” Franco said. “Quick!”
He undid the window latch and attempted to lift it, but it was stuck. Franco banged on the glass, then tried to lift it again until it slowly gave in. The glass trembled on its way up.
We heard coughing nearby. Someone else was in the house!
Franco looked at the door.
“My father!”
He turned back to me. “You’re going to have to jump,” he told me. “I’ll get my father.”
I glanced out the window. There was not a tree or anything to hold on to, and it looked so high. I couldn’t jump. I would break all my bones.
As he turned, I clenched his hand, digging my fingernails into his skin. “No, don’t leave me, please.” I was being selfish, but couldn’t help it. “I can’t jump. It’s too high.”
“You can do it. It’s not as high as you think. I’ve done it before.”
He was lying to give me courage, I could tell.
“I’ll help you.” His anger had faded in the face of our impending mortality. I, myself, had forgotten all the discomfort I usually felt at his proximity.
“Come on.” He extended his hand out to me. The flames were eating up the bedroom door and an unbearable heat filtered into the room.
I climbed on the window frame, clinging to his hand. He was trying to let go, but I wouldn’t let him. “Just jump, Catalina,” he said. Something had happened to his voice. I sensed impatience, fear. His gaze kept going toward the door. There it was, the coughing. His father.
I let go of his hand and shut my eyes. The next thing I knew, there was excruciating pain throughout my legs. The ground was hard, dry, and tiny rocks dug into my palms and knees. Too weak to get up, I looked up at the window, but Franco was gone. He’d gone back inside to save his father.
CHAPTER 31
Puri
April 1920
Last night I had a nightmare. Cristóbal was lying at the bottom of the ocean with his eyes wide open and his skin bloated and purple. When his hand reached out to me, I woke up panting and covered in sweat. I’d been trying not to think about him ever since I started spending time with Martin. Such was my guilt. Was Cristóbal denouncing my betrayal? Blaming me for his misfortune?
I had to make it up to him. I had to find his killer.
But things were so muddled. I thought about Catalina. She was tormented by what had happened to Franco. She blamed herself for his burns, for his suffering, for rejecting his love. She said that after the fire, he was never the same, but she didn’t want to tell me how he’d changed and I couldn’t see the connection between the incident on the ship and her. Not after knowing that the relationship between Franco and Catalina had cooled after the fire.
I’d often asked myself what I would do once I found out who had tried to kill me. I didn’t think I could retaliate in a similar fashion. I didn’t see myself killing either one of my sisters or my brother. It was not in my nature. I would probably just collect all the evidence and take it to the authorities. Let them deal with it. I’d thought about paying the police a visit anyway—not for the purposes Soledad was expecting—but to warn them of what had happened aboard the Andes. What stopped me was the possibility that they would take the investigation from my hands and ruin everything I’d been working toward. They would probably try to appease me, like Captain Blake had done, and then tell me the investigation had to be conducted under British jurisdiction. But if I presented proof, or better yet, a confession, things would be different. They couldn’t ignore me.