Emilia stepped into the dais beside him, and was met with absolute silence.
Emilia wiped her hands on her skirt again, slowly, as she looked out into the crowd. There were plenty of strangers in it but among them were people she’d known her entire life. People who’d seen her crash Luis’s bicycle against the Molinas’ fence and campaign desperately to save the old bridge from being torn down. People who had looked at her with fond exasperation, asking each other what scrape Emilia Cruz would get into next. People who’d all but shunned her and Susana when they’d noticed their father cared more about drowning his sorrows than being considered respectable.
“It’s true a lot of you know me as Emilia Cruz.” Emilia’s voice sounded strange to her ears. “As Virgilio’s daughter, as a suffragist who gets a little too worked up about the cause,” she said as she spied Rosa and Perla. “As the girl who ate all the mangoes from Don Octavio’s tree during a single week—even the green ones.” There was laughter from those who remembered that she’d been sick for days after. To this day, she couldn’t see a mango without feeling slightly queasy. “And some of you may know that I write.
“I don’t pretend I inherited my father’s talent. But I did inherit something else from him— his appreciation for the unconventional.” Emilia waited for the titters, but none came. “Where his poetry is unconventional in its form, my writing is unconventional in content. This predilection for stepping outside the norm has led me to write about subjects that might not be considered altogether respectable. Not everyone agrees with the views I have set forth in my writing. But I believe everyone deserves the opportunity to decide for themselves— thanks to Mrs. Espinosa’s adult literacy program, dozens will have that opportunity.
“I stand here before you tonight, pledging my support for the program and for freedom of choice—” She looked over at Ana Maria’s booth, “as a writer whose work has been challenged, often and vehemently. And I ask you that, whatever your beliefs, you join me in denouncing all attempts at stifling voices who dare to say something different.”
Emilia’s gaze swept over the crowd again. Most of the faces turned toward her looked curious, though quite a few were obviously wishing she would get on with the speech so the dancing could start. Some, who were beginning to understand what her words were leading to, looked distinctly unfriendly. Emilia’s stomach twisted into a knot. In minutes—less, even, would the rest of the crowd wear the same expression?
Part of her felt as if she wouldn’t be able to bear it. But if Emilia ever wanted the freedom to be herself, she knew she had to.
“Some of you know me as Emilia Cruz. But to most of you, I am simply Miss Del Valle, author of The True Accounts of a Former Courtesan.”
A hush had fallen over the crowd. The townspeople had been struck dumb by the revelation and were staring at Emilia with wide eyes—all save for Cristobal Mendez, who was looking at her with something that looked like triumph. Even the newsmen in the crowd were silent as they wrote furiously in their little pads.
Mrs. Espinosa was the first to recover. “Thank you, Miss Cruz,” she said with a voice as cold as ice. “Thank you for that addition to tonight’s program. Let us now continue with the evening’s festivities—”
Her voice faltered when she realized no one was listening to her. They were all gaping at Emilia as she stepped off the dais, her head held high.
Ruben caught Emilia’s arm, pulling her into his embrace, heedless of the people around them. “You did very well,” he murmured.
“What a nice picture this makes,” Mendez said. He had pushed through the crowd and was standing in front of them, Manuel at his side.
Ruben felt a wave of cold fury sweep through him when he caught Manuel’s gaze. Theirs hadn’t been a close friendship, but it had been a friendship, and his betrayal had hurt.
“Give it up,” he told them. “Your plan to humiliate Emilia didn’t work. Publish your little exposé if you like, but leave us alone.”
Manuel didn’t so much as glance at him. His attention was focused on Emilia, with an intensity that made Ruben’s stomach churn. “Really, Miss Emilia, one has to admire your capacity for forgiveness.”
The reporters, drawn to the scent of blood, flocked towards them.
“Whatever do you mean, Vega?” Emilia asked coldly.
Manuel signaled to Ruben, and the arm he had around Emilia. “I’m talking about Mr. Torres, of course. Hadn’t you thought to wonder how I knew about your secret identity?”
“You overheard a private conversation,” she said. “And like a common scoundrel, decided to take advantage of it.”
“I’m hurt, Miss Emilia, by the rather low opinion you have of me. I’m sorry to tell you that’s not the case.” He took a step towards Emilia and Ruben fought the urge to move between them. “I knew because Ruben told me. I knew because Ruben is the editor of Blanco y Negro. He’s the one who’s been writing all those articles about you and he’s the one who told me to write the exposé.”
“Do you really expect me to believe that?” Emilia said, laughing. She glanced at Ruben and the expression on his face made her laughter melt away. “Tell me it isn’t true.”
“I can’t,” he said.
The look she gave him could have driven him to his knees. There was anger there, and disgust. But most of all there was pain, a pain so deep it left him breathless. He made no move to stop her but stood there, stricken, as she whirled around and left.
For the third time that month, Ruben felt as if he was drowning. Only this time he was standing on dry land, with no one to blame but himself.
Hs hand was shaking. He noted it abstractedly, as if noticing something about an appendage that was not his own.
It stopped shaking when he curled it into a fist and slammed it into Manuel’s face.
Manuel shouted and fell backwards, right into the reporters. Blood was streaming from his nose, staining his white shirt. Ruben waited until he opened his eyes to give him one final glare. And then, he turned away and followed Emilia into the night.
Chapter 19
If this had been a story, it would have been storming. Rain would have been pelting the ground as thunder rumbled in the sky. Instead, the dark skies remained perfectly clear, and a gentle breeze ran through the leaves on the palm trees, making a soft rustling noise.
Emilia didn’t know where she was going until she saw the path leading towards the water.
It had been a long time since she’d walked to the lagoon at night. She’d done it often enough when she was younger and the way to the lagoon was filled with exciting possibilities, but it had been years since she’d stumbled over the thick tangle of vegetation, guided only by memory and moonlight.
She wasn’t alone. Ruben had been following her since she’d staggered away from him, grimly silent. It wasn’t until she turned into the path that he called after her. “Where are you going?”
“To think!”
The boat shed was empty and the dark, and so was the water. But the moon was out, and it cast enough light for Emilia to see the ropes tethering the boats to the dock. Dropping down into one of the boats, she unwound its rope and took up the oars.
It was bad enough that she’d trusted him with something so serious after only a few weeks’ acquaintance when he’d never given her any indication, aside from being Luis’s friend, that he deserved that trust.
But the worst thing was that she didn’t want to be angry at him at all. And that scared her more than anything.
He watched her from shore for a moment and then, exclaiming something that was probably a curse, he splashed through the water and hoisted himself up into the boat, which rocked wildly but did not, unfortunately, overturn.
Cursing freely now, he sat at the other end of the boat, dripping, his shoes probably ruined, and glared at her. She returned his look with a cool glance of her own.
“So in addition to being a liar, you’ve decided to become a pest,” she said.
“Ca
ll me whatever you like, but I have no intention of leaving you alone in a boat, knowing your propensity for disaster where bodies of water are concerned.”
“I’m very obliged, I’m sure,” she said in freezing tones. “But I neither need nor want your help.”
“You’ll be glad enough of it when you’re stranded in the middle of the lagoon, too tired to row back,” he said. Leaning forward, he said, “I didn’t tell him.”
“No one else knew, Ruben. No one but you and Susana.”
“He figured it out on his own. He saw how upset I was when he kept pushing me to publish the truth and he realized I must have been covering for you.”
“All right,” Emilia said. “But what he said about your being the editor of Blanco y Negro—that was true.”
“It was. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have, the moment you told me your own secret. I wanted to.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He made an inarticulate sound and then, when she thought he wouldn’t answer, he said, “Because I was afraid you’d hate me. And Emilia, I couldn’t bear it if you hated me, not when I—”
He bit his words off and Emilia wished desperately he would continue. Had he been about to say he loved her? Emilia had never thought of herself as the sort of person who could inspire love. She’s wasn’t sweet and gentle like Susana, and she hadn’t much beauty to speak of. She was fun to be around and she’d had plenty of flirtations but none of those men—boys, really—had ever professed to love her.
Of course, neither had Ruben.
“I don’t hate you,” she said in a low voice. “Even though I should. That day at the boarding house, you asked me to trust you and I did, and yet you didn’t see fit to extend me the same courtesy.”
“I’m trusting you now,” he said, holding her gaze.
“You don’t find it easy to trust, do you?” she murmured. “You don’t trust Luis to be faithful to Susana even though anyone can tell he’s devoted to her. You don’t trust your sister when she says your family needs you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “That may be true.”
“It is true,” she said, sitting back. She hadn’t realized she’d been leaning towards him. “Did Luis know about your being the editor of Blanco y Negro?”
“I never dared tell him. He’s got such a strict idea of what’s honorable and decent that I—well, I felt he would despise me if he knew the truth of what I do.” Ruben spread out his hands. “So there you have it. I’m a liar, and a selfish one at that.”
And if he was a liar, then what was she? She’d kept her own identity a secret from everyone she knew, and she’d only told him the truth because he’d caught her in an unguarded moment.
But she’d told him. And he’d had plenty of opportunity to tell her.
“I’ve no right to ask for your forgiveness. But Emilia—I really am sorry for not trusting you with the truth.”
“You lied to me,” she said, and licked her lips. “I don’t know if it’s something I can forgive.”
His heart sank.
Only figuratively, not literally, which would have been fortunate as it would have dragged him down to the bottom of the lagoon with it and he wouldn’t have to sit opposite Emilia, trying to pretend desperation wasn’t clawing at him as he listened to her speak.
“I should have known,” she said. “Some of the pieces sound like you, I think. I know your style pretty well—Susana teases me about it and I’ve no doubt you will, too, but I used to cut out some of your columns to read over and over. I also know you mean what you say in your articles, more than you’d like to admit.”
“Maybe so,” he said after a pause. “But there are things about your work that I like, and that I haven’t written about. There’s real emotion in your stories, not just sentiment. You have a real talent for capturing life and I—that’s something I’ve always struggled with in my own writing.”
“I appreciate your saying so—“
“I’m not just saying so, Emilia. It’s the truth,” he said, and even he was a bit taken aback at how vehement he sounded. “But I also know there’s no room for shades of gray in a paper like Blanco y Negro. Everything I print is technically true, but it isn’t the truth. There is, after all, more than one truth, if you want to get philosophical about it.”
The corner of her lips quirked upwards. “Must we get philosophical?” she said, in such an accurate imitation of Carmen Vidal’s drawl that Ruben let out a surprised laugh.
“Your writing has heart,” he told her. “It’s one of the reasons it’s become so popular.”
“Not the ‘striking disregard for anything resembling restraint’?” she quoted him, lifting an eyebrow. Ruben felt himself flush.
“I don’t want to make excuses for the things I’ve written, but I’ve felt for a long time that I should apologize for them. It’s so easy to dash off a piece without considering what damage it will do.”
Silence fell before them, and was broken shortly afterward by Emilia. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I was going to,” Ruben said. “Earlier today, when I took you to Parque de los Enamorados. But then your sister interrupted us and Emilia, I was happy she did because it meant that for one more minute—one more hour—I would be able to face you without seeing you look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”
“You couldn’t possibly know how I’m looking at you,” she said. “It’s too dark.”
“Don’t, Emilia,” he said softly. Despite what she’d said earlier he could tell she was on the verge of forgiving him. But she deserved better than someone who kept his actions from her in order to gain her respect.
“I lied to Susana. I told her Luis didn’t want to marry her but I lied. I’d told him the same thing earlier to chase him away.”
There was a pause and then she asked abruptly, “Is it because you’re in love with her?”
“With your sister?” He gaped at Emilia. “Of course I’m not.”
“Then why? Why have you been trying so hard to keep them apart?”
“Because I didn’t want your sister to end up like Luis’s last fiancee.” As he told Emilia about Miss Perdomo, her face came vividly into his mind’s eye. “I’d known from the start he wasn’t really going to go through with the marriage. If I had said something, perhaps I could have spared them both the pain.” Ruben cleared his throat to fill the silence coming from Emilia’s side of the boat. “I saw him with Carmen Vidal this afternoon. They looked so intimate, I thought—”
“Carmen is a flirt. They both are. You should know—you’ve said it about Luis often enough” There was a glimmer across from him, and Ruben realized it was the light catching Emilia’s earrings as she shook her head. She reached for the oars. “Susana must be feeling awful. I need to go to her.”
The boat began to move again, weaving smoothly through the roots, the silence broken only by the sound of the condensation as it dripped from leaves and into the water.
Chapter 20
Ruben never bothered going to bed.
He set out as soon as it was light. The small, sherbet-colored houses on Emilia’s street were shaded by old trees and the ground below was carpeted with petals—orange from the jacarandas and yellow from ylang ylang. They were crushed under his footsteps as he made his way to the pale pink house with the guava tree in front and rapped on the front door.
It seemed like an age went by before Susana Cruz stepped out into the porch and closed the door quietly behind her.
“She doesn’t want to speak to you,” she said in a low voice.
He studied her, but he couldn’t tell from her expression if she knew he’d lied to her the day before. “Then I hope you will. There is something I have to tell you and I’d just as soon say it without her here.”
“If this is about what you said to me yesterday, Emilia told me last night. To be honest, to know that you’d go to such lengths to protect your friend—and myself—is gratif
ying. But you insult me, Mr. Torres, by suggesting I haven’t the capacity to see things for myself. Luis told me about Miss Perdomo last year. I know what he did and, more importantly, I know why he did it.”
“I only wanted to spare you the pain of a broken engagement.”
“I know. Your heart is in the right place when it comes to Luis, at least. But not when it comes to Emilia. She trusted you, and you let her down. I’m sure that by now you know my sister doesn’t find it easy to open up to people, especially when it comes to things she considers very important.” She lowered her voice a fraction. “You hurt her deeply, Mr. Torres.”
“I won’t leave,” he said. “Not unless she asks me to. Tell her that. Tell her I’ll be at the boarding house, waiting for her.”
Miss Cruz’s gaze was flinty, and it made her look so much like Emilia that something inside him ached. “She’s better off without you, and you know it.”
He swallowed hard, and tried to find something to say but instead stood there in the Cruzes’ porch, mute.
Ruben must have looked stricken—he felt stricken—because Miss Cruz looked a little ashamed. But her voice, when she next spoke, was firm. “You should leave now. And I suggest you don’t come back again.”
He left.
He walked back to the boarding house for lack of anywhere else to go. The fair would open in a little over an hour and soon the throngs of people would be crowding the streets, eager, he was sure, for a glimpse of Miss Del Valle, and he couldn’t bear the thought of being among them and listening to their gossip and their snide comments.
Miss Cruz’s words were still echoing inside his head, over and over again—She’s better off without you. It would have been a cruel thing to say, but she wasn’t a cruel sort of person. It was simply true.
He was rounding the corner of Paseo Principal when a motorcar—he recognized it the one belonging to Ana Maria Espinosa’s family—pulled up beside him. Inside was Violeta. She sprang out when she saw him, too fast for the driver to get out from behind the wheel to open the door for her, and ran towards Ruben.
A Summer for Scandal Page 18
