*
I spent the rest of the afternoon preparing chocolate drinks and truffles for Laurent and my sisters. Just like Martin and Bachita, my sisters were in awe as the beans transformed in the mill. Laurent, not so much. He said he’d tasted better in his native country （“It must be the ingredients. They are purer in France.”）。 But my sisters didn’t care about those details and they didn’t even bother waiting for the truffles to cool down completely. They were captivated and ate chocolate until their stomachs ached. I forgot I was supposed to be on guard around them and laughed as they licked their fingers—all etiquette gone—and their mouths were filled with chocolate. If only my father would’ve brought me here when I was younger, I would’ve grown up with these women. How lonely I’d been in my mother’s quiet apartment, always surrounded by adults.
When my sisters were done indulging, they went to bed, satisfied, and Laurent went to town to play Corazones, his “favorite card game and far superior to Cuarenta,” with his friends.
With all the eating and drinking, I was certain I wouldn’t see my sisters until the morning. It was my one chance to see what was inside that infamous drawer in my father’s study.
When the house was quiet, I descended the staircase, candle in hand, and snuck inside the room. I checked the drawer, but it was still locked. I felt under the desk, checked floorboards and bookshelves, but there was no sign of the key.
I sat in my father’s leather chair, deflated. The only thing left to do was convince Martin to leave the mystery aside and tell me what was inside the drawer. I crossed my hands behind my head and stretched my back. I was so tired of wearing this damned corset around my breasts.
In front of me was an oil painting of three windmills sitting on top of a hill. In the foreground was a field of wheat and behind it, rows of olive trees. It was La Mancha—the land of Don Quijote—a region I’d passed by on my way to Toledo many times. Funny, my mother had a similar painting. It looked like it had been painted by the same artist. My father must have brought it from Spain.
And then, I remembered.
I sprang from my chair.
My mother used to hide the key to her trunk behind the frame of that very same painting. She would hang it on the hook that held the picture up.
I lifted the painting from the hook.
And there it was.
An inexplainable lump came to my throat. My parents had more in common than I’d thought. How often had they thought of each other, I wondered, how much had they missed each other’s company, and how many habits and idiosyncrasies had they shared? I grabbed the key and tried it in the drawer’s lock. It worked! But nothing would’ve prepared me for what I found there.
A chess set?
I removed the wooden box to check underneath. There was nothing. But this couldn’t be it.
Why on earth would anyone hide a game? And what did this chess set have to do with my father’s plantation?
I set the board on the table to examine it. There was nothing extraordinary about it. On either side were drawers to hold the pieces. I shuffled through them and found another key.
This one was tiny and had a weird shape to it. It looked like the key to a safe. I groaned. Couldn’t my father be a little more straightforward? Now I had to look for a safe? Then I remembered that most safes usually had combinations, not keys. Maybe this was a key for those safety boxes kept at banks?
Yes, that had to be it.
In the morning, I would go to the bank and see if there was a match.
As I tiptoed across the patio, a quick movement to my side caught my attention. I turned toward the back door that Martin and I had used earlier today to leave the hacienda, and made out the shape of a woman in a cloak.
I spotted a flash of blond hair flying about. It could only be Angélica’s.
She didn’t see me as she opened the door and left the house, mingling with the shadows of the night.
CHAPTER 34
The bank manager was hesitant to let me open my father’s safe deposit box, but after I told him that Don Armand Lafont himself had left the key for my wife—the majority holder of all his properties—and that I would be willing to pay him a small fee for his help, he acquiesced. He added, as a means to justify his actions not only to me but also to himself, that he already knew that my father had made María Purificación the primary beneficiary of his will.
After showing me to my father’s safety box, he left me alone in the vault, a room with walls made of iron—a claustrophobic’s nightmare. My mother would’ve hated it. She couldn’t stand closed spaces and always left the windows open in our apartment, even when it was cold outside.