On one side of the photograph is a pretty girl, with corkscrews of blond hair. She has her arm around Beatriz, her other hand extended to take the photo. Their eyes are closed, as they kiss.
Ana Maria.
The expression on Beatriz’s face is one I’ve never seen: pure joy.
“Who is this girl?” Gabriel murmurs.
I wonder what he is thinking. “Her host sister, a friend from Santa Cruz.”
“A friend,” he mutters, and at first I think he is reacting to Beatriz kissing a girl. But when he touches a fingertip to the Scotch tape down the center of the photograph, I realize he’s angry at whoever broke Beatriz’s heart so cleanly that she would tear apart this picture, and then regretfully patch it back together. “When her school closed, Beatriz begged to come back here. Is this why?”
I love that Gabriel has shoved aside the unimportant details—his daughter falling for a girl is inconsequential; what matters is that she was hurt. That she still is. That we are just the latest in a line of people she cared for who let her down.
I think of what Beatriz said to me when we were in the trillizos.
Truth or dare. Unconditional love is bullshit. She loved me, but not like that.
I wanted to know what it would be like to just let go.
“Gabriel,” I breathe. “I think I know where she is.”
The three volcanic tunnels are not that far from Gabriel’s farm. We get as close as we can by truck and then Gabriel slings ropes and a rappelling harness over his shoulder. As we tramp through the thick ground cover, I call out Beatriz’s name, but there is no answer.
I think about how far the ladder went into the shaft, how black it was below that. I wonder how much further she would have had to fall.
Curling my hand around Abuela’s miraculous medal, I pray.
“Beatriz,” I scream again.
The wind whispers through the brush and whips my hair around my face. Gabriel finds a sturdy tree and wraps one end of the rope around it, tying a series of impossible knots. It is an unfairly beautiful day, with puffy white clouds dancing across the sky and birdsong like a symphony. I stand in front of the three volcanic tunnels. If she’s even here, she could be in any of them.
At the bottom of any of them.
“I’m going down,” I tell Gabriel.
“What?” His head snaps up in the middle of securing the rope. “Diana, wait—”
But I can’t. I start descending the ladder of the tunnel beside the one Beatriz and I climbed into, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The distant sun bounces off minerals in the rock walls, glowing gold. I climb deeper, swallowed by this stone throat.
The only sound is the rhythmic drip of water on rock. Plink. Plink.
And then a choked sob.
“Beatriz?” I cry, moving faster. “Gabriel!” I yell. “In here!” I lose my footing on the slick ladder in my hurry. “Hang on. I’m coming.”
A beat, and then her voice threads toward me. “Just go away,” Beatriz sobs.
Her words are disembodied, floating like ghosts. I can’t see her anywhere below me. “I know you’re upset about what you saw,” I say, climbing down and down and down, until I reach the end of the ladder, and still she’s not there. Wildly, I look between my feet on the bottom rung, wondering if I will see her broken body below me.
“I should never have talked to you,” Beatriz says. I cannot see her; I go still and listen for the bounce of sound. I follow the soft hitch of her crying and—there—a shadow moving in a shadow. She clings to another ladder on the far side of the lava tube. There are a few straggling ropes left behind by others.
“I thought … ?you cared. I thought you meant what you said. But you’re just like everyone else who says that and then leaves.”
“You do matter to me, Beatriz,” I say gently. “But I was always going to leave.”
“Did you tell my dad that before or after you fucked him?”
I wince. “I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Yeah, sure. Keep digging that hole …”
“This isn’t about him. This is about you,” I say. “And I do care about you, Bea. I do.”
Her sobs get louder. “Stop lying. Just fucking stop saying that.”
The ladder shudders as booted feet strike the wall beside me. “She’s not lying, Beatriz,” Gabriel says, falling into view in the space between me and his daughter. He has the rappelling rope wrapped around him, a link to the world above. It is taut and seems too thin to support his weight. If it snaps, he is too far to grab either of the ladders Beatriz and I stand on. “When you care about someone, it just … ?happens,” he says quietly. “None of us get to choose who we love.”