by Vella Munn
Chela was vaguely aware that she’d developed blisters on her heels from her walk, but it wasn’t until she was in her driveway and getting out of the Jeep that she realized how uncomfortable they had become. She limped to her front door, unlocked it, and stepped inside. She kicked off her shoes and locked the door behind her—she didn’t want to be disturbed by anyone—then sat down and studied her heels, grimacing because dirt had gotten into the blisters. She was trying to work up the energy to go into the bathroom when her phone began to ring.
Chela stared dully at the instrument, hating it. Finally, when it had rung a half-dozen times, she took it off the hook and hurried into the bathroom. Water began to fill the tub as she pulled off her dirty clothes. Chela eased her tired body into the tub and lay unmoving with her head resting against the lip. The warm water slowly seeped into her, increasing her languor but easing some of the ache in her limbs. If only the bath could do the same for her head. If only she could stop thinking about the telephone and wondering if it had been Magadan on the other end.
Chela stayed in the bathroom for over half an hour. Although it didn’t need it, she washed her hair twice and gently scrubbed all the dirt out of her blisters. Finally, when the water turned cool, she stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a large terry-cloth towel. She limped into the bedroom and stared dully into her closet. She knew she should go to work—they were expecting her—but she couldn’t even decide what to wear.
For a minute Chela didn’t think she was going to surrender to the impulse. She’d be able to reach into the closet without touching the peach dress Magadan had given her. But her fingers acted with a will of their own, sliding gently down the silky fabric, lingering at the soft waistline gathers. Chela snapped her eyes shut and grabbed at the side of the closet for support. She swayed, feeling lightheaded and dangerously close to tears again. Why did that dress have to be there?
In desperation Chela reached out again and grabbed the first garment she touched. It was the white eyelet sundress she’d worn when she went to Phillip’s house to meet with Magadan. Chela almost dropped the sundress but somehow found the courage to hold on to it. Memories would be part of her for the rest of her life. Today was soon enough to start dealing with that reality.
Chela slipped into the dress, towel dried her hair, and limped to the small bathroom mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed and dull, but she was beyond caring about her appearance. No matter how tired she was, how much her blisters throbbed, she was grateful she had to get dressed and go to work this morning. It gave her an excuse to get out of the house and away from the telephone. Enough things had to be done today to keep her moving and on her feet until she could fall into bed exhausted.
Chela poured herself a glass of orange juice and drank it, but her stomach recoiled at the thought of food. Her last act before leaving the house was to slip into a pair of heelless sandals. As she closed the front door behind her, Chela was thinking about the phone lying off its hook.
She didn’t notice the figure waiting in her Jeep until it was too late. She was more than halfway between it and the house when she stopped, her body instantly tensed for flight.
“Don’t run, Chela. Please. We have to talk.” She stood where she was, unable to think of anything except her throbbing heels. “I have to go to work,” she said lamely.
“Not as much as we have to talk. Don’t put me off. It has to happen sooner or later.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she responded dully, the effect of her sleepless night and empty stomach weighing her down. “There isn’t anything left to say, Magadan.”
The man eased his body out of her Jeep but didn’t come any closer. He was staring at her figure with an intensity that was nearly her undoing. “Why are you wearing that dress?”
Chela didn’t feel strong enough to explain the rationale that had gone into that decision. “It’s hot. The dress is cool. Magadan, I have to get to work.”
“To hell with work! I’m sorry,” Magadan muttered, rubbing a big hand over his eyes. “We’ve both been through the wringer in the past few hours. I know how tired I am. It has to be even worse for you.”
For some inexplicable reason Chela giggled. “I have blisters. That didn’t happen the last time I had to walk.”
A tentative smile touched Magadan’s lips. “You can laugh. That’s good. Why did you run away from me?”
Chela’s urge to laugh died as quickly as it had been born. She shifted her weight, aware of how many hours she’d spent on her feet since she’d last slept. “I don’t think you really need to ask me that,” she pointed out in clipped tones because she was fighting for self-control. “You know what Kohl said.”
“I tried calling you earlier,” Magadan said.
“I know. I took the phone off the hook.”
The tentative smile touched his lips again. “I’m beat. I know you are, too. Can’t we go somewhere where we can at least sit down?”
“I have to go to work.”
“The hell you do!” Magadan’s long, powerful legs ate up the distance between them. He took her hands in his, not touching the bruised right wrist that bore the marks of Kohl’s anger. “Unless you want me to follow you wherever you go today, you’d better agree to this conversation. I’m not going to walk out of your life, Chela.”
Chela shook her head but didn’t fight him. “We don’t live in the same world, Magadan.”
“I don’t ever want to hear you say that again,” he spat. “The only thing that matters is how we feel about each other, not our backgrounds. And we’ll never know how we feel if we don’t talk.”
Maybe Magadan was right. Chela still wanted to turn her back on this intense man, give herself space, and rest, and thinking time. But what good would her thinking do? Would that decide anything? “We should have talked a long time ago,” she said, knowing her words could cut and injure but needing to say them anyway. “If only you’d been honest—”
Instead of replying, Magadan pushed her ahead of him until they were at the side of the road where his pickup was parked. “You want honesty?” he asked bitterly as he opened the passenger door and helped her step up into it. “I’ll give you honesty.”
Chela stared at Magadan as he got in next to her and put the key in the ignition. “Where are we going?” she asked tentatively, tension clipping off the ends of her words. Talking to Magadan about the twists and turns in their relationship could spell the end to everything. But maybe it was over already, and all that remained was the burial.
“To my house.”
Chela shivered. “I don’t want to go there,” she said, surprised at the frightened tone that had broken through her defenses.
Magadan touched her cheek before turning back to the task of driving. “I understand,” he said softly, “but I have my reasons. Please trust me.”
Trust was a strange word coming from a man who had never trusted her enough to reveal anything of himself. It would be much easier to order him to stop now, to get out of his truck and tell him that nothing existed between them anymore, but a glance at Magadan’s profile filled Chela with proof that her heart was a long way from believing that. She had always prided herself on her courage. She wanted Magadan to see that, if nothing else. They traveled in silence until they reached the east hills.
“I wouldn’t have chosen this location if it had been up to me,” Magadan said conversationally but without looking at Chela. “I was in a hurry to find a place to live, and your father’s house was available. The people here have cut themselves off from the rest of the valley. They live in their own closed-in community, safely insulated from certain realities.”
Chela looked at Magadan. This time her glance lasted longer than it had when they left her house. “It’s where the people with money in the valley come to live,” she said.
“Not me. I have little personal use for money. I’m too busy to think about where I hang my hat, how many rooms a house has. There are more important things in life.”
> “Like what?”
“Like getting rid of men like Kohl. He’s been formally charged with things ranging from illegal transporting of migrants to fraud. He may even be charged with kidnapping Ortez. I wanted you to know that. The DA believes the charges are going to stick. There’s even evidence he blackmailed some orchardists. The DA hopes he can get them to step forward.”
“Will I have to testify?”
“I don’t know.” Magadan touched her cheek again before pulling into his driveway. “I hope not. Kohl might make good on his threat.”
Chela slumped in her seat and closed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care anymore.”
“I think you do,” Magadan objected before coming around to let her out. “I think you care a lot more than you’re willing to let on. I hope I can change some of that for you.”
“You think you can change my relationship with my father?” Chela asked bitterly. “I never wanted anyone to know who he was.” She closed her eyes again, fighting a desire to lean against Magadan. “Least of all you,” she managed, her words barely audible.
“Why?” Magadan had started to unlock the front door, but now he stopped.
“I don’t know!” Chela hissed. “Why should it matter? You know all about what drives men to take and take and take in order to achieve their end,” she said in a bitter tone.
Magadan grabbed Chela’s forearm and led her into the house. His blazing eyes boring down on her were echoed by the sound of the door slamming. “What the hell do you mean by that?”
Chela would not cower before him. If he wanted a talk, it would begin. “My father told me.”
“Your father told you what?” Magadan asked as he released her.
Chela sank into the recesses of the recliner, and, shaking off the need to relax, began, her words tumbling out almost as if they existed beyond her control. “My father told me how determined you were to get hold of his land, this house. He told me you demanded repayment on the loan you’d given him. He couldn’t come up with the money, and when you sued, it broke him.”
“He said that?” Magadan hadn’t sat down. Instead he was leaning against the wall nearest Chela’s recliner. He lifted one leg and planted his shoe against the wall, oblivious of the marks he was leaving on the white surface. “Lou told you I sued him?”
“Yes. Or words to that effect,” she faltered slightly. Did she believe anything she was saying? “I didn’t understand it all; I’ve never been part of my father’s world. How could I know everything about his business dealings?”
“But you believed him when he blamed me for his downfall?”
Chela returned Magadan’s glare. To do otherwise would be to surrender her will to his. “Yes, he had no reason to lie to me.”
“And what if I told you I didn’t meet your father until I heard he’d declared bankruptcy. What reason would I have to lie to you?”
Chela blinked. What was Magadan saying? He would have to have some contact with her father in order for Lou to borrow from him. Either her father or Magadan had lied to her. “Are you telling me you never had any business dealings with my father?” she asked, stalling for time while her mind sought a way out of the emotions bombarding her.
“I’ve seen him once—when we met to sign the necessary papers. I assumed his debts, that’s all. What about now, Chela? Which of us are you going to believe?”
“I don’t know,” she moaned. But that wasn’t the truth. She had no reason to believe her father, there’d never been any trust, any openness between them. She’d known that so long that the knowledge carried no pain with it. “Is that why you brought me here—to talk about my father?”
“That was one of the things.” Magadan pushed himself away from the wall and finally settled himself in a couch. Although a coffee table stood between them, Chela felt anything but safe. His eyes, which never left hers, were chains linking them together. “I need to know how you feel about him. I hope you trust me enough to be honest about that.”
“We’re talking about us, not my father. I want to know why you wouldn’t tell me anything about yourself, why I had to find out about you and this house and Hidden Valley Orchard on my own.” Chela kicked off her sandals and tucked her feet up under her white sundress. She wanted to lock her arms around her knees, but that would tell Magadan too much about the turmoil she was in.
Magadan gave an angry snort. “Do you remember what you were like when you found out? You were half crazy when I saw you sitting on my front step that afternoon. You accused me of a lot of things, of being a coyote. You said I was the kind of man who looked for weakness in people and twisted that around to my advantage.”
“I remember,” Chela whispered. There were a lot of things she shouldn’t have said that day. “But you have to understand I’ve devoted my life to improving the lives of migrants. I’ve seen what orchardists can do to make sure those lives don’t change. Magadan, my mother owed her soul to an orchardist—it wasn’t my father—but she had to borrow money from the orchardist to support us until the harvest came in. She was in his debt. The debt grew and grew until there was no way out. Magadan, he owned her. When I learned you were one of them—”
“You decided to hate me. You don’t see it, do you, Chela? You still don’t see why I didn’t want to tell you who I was.
“I did a lot more than talk to your boss and the sheriff before I contacted you. From my foreman I learned about the old system of putting a laborer in an orchardist’s debt. It was a form of slavery. Pedro knew your mother. He told me she was trapped in the orchard. I understand how deep your hatred of orchardists was.”
Chela closed her eyes in agony. “You didn’t think I could take honesty from you because of that?”
“Do you blame me?”
“I don’t know.” Chela tried to breathe, but it hurt too much. “Why did she have to die?” she sobbed. “She was all I had in the world.”
“Maybe, maybe not. I found something this morning.” Magadan surged to his feet and held his hands out toward her. “Come on, you need to see this.”
“See what?” Chela pushed her back farther into the recliner, trying to escape the impact of Magadan’s eyes.
“Come.” He took her arms, pulling her out of the recliner as if she weighed no more than a kitten. “You want honesty? I think I can give you that now.”
Chela struggled in his grip, but he didn’t seem to notice. He pushed her ahead of him until they reached the flight of stairs leading to the second floor. Chela stumbled twice as Magadan propelled her up the stairs. “When you ran away from me out there, I thought everything was finished between us,” he was saying. “I saw the pain in your eyes. You looked so damn alone.”
Chela tried to turn around. “You don’t have to—”
“The hell I don’t.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me last night?”
Magadan steered her into a room at the top of the stairs. “You weren’t in any mood to listen. You were hurting and you needed to be alone at that moment.”
He forced her to look into his eyes. “Do you know what I did when I got back here this morning? I started to tear into this room—your father’s bedroom. I wanted everything that was his out of here. I didn’t get far, because I found something you need to see.”
“I don’t understand” were the only words Chela could manage to form.
“You will in a minute.” Magadan released her while he strode across the room. Chela looked quickly around, trying to take in as much as possible of a magnificent master bedroom dominated by a king-size bed. The windows were covered by heavy brocade draperies. A glass-top mahogany dresser with a huge mirror reflected Chela’s startled, wary eyes.
She was still trying to comprehend what she was learning about her father when Magadan shoved a small jewelry box in her hand. “I found this in the back of one of the closets. Your father didn’t take anything except his clothes from the house. That was part of the legal agreement. “Go on,” he challen
ged. “Open it.”
Chela turned stricken eyes on Magadan, but he was giving her no way out. Slowly, feeling as if she were opening Pandora’s box, Chela unfastened the lid and lifted it. Inside were a few newspaper clippings, a faded picture.
She lifted the picture in trembling fingers. It was a black-and-white snapshot of a beautiful Mexican woman holding the hand of a young girl. Chela sobbed as she clasped the picture to her breast and collapsed on the bed. She dropped her head, her heart going back more than twenty years. “That’s my mother,” she whispered.
“And you’re the little girl. Think about that, Chela. Your father kept that picture all those years.”
Chela couldn’t trust herself to speak; instead she unfolded one of the newspaper clippings and started to read. It was a story written when she’d started going into the orchards to teach the migrants. The story contained a photograph of her surrounded by Mexicans. Her father had underlined her name in the picture caption. The other newspaper clippings were of the same kind. There was one on the migrant education program with a paragraph devoted to her role in it. Another article dealt with her activities in getting the county gleaning project underway. There was even a yellowed column listing her name along with the others graduating from college.
Chela let the papers slip from her fingers. She stared up at Magadan, her mouth open, but nothing came out. She swallowed and tried again. “I never knew.”
“There’s more to the man than you thought.”
“Magadan?” Chela’s head was filling with a roaring sound, but she struggled to speak over the rushing tide. “My father came to see me the other day. He—he said he wouldn’t let Kohl do anything to me. I didn’t understand then. I—I’ve hated him so long, I believed he felt the same way.” She touched the box beside her on the bed but lacked the strength to pick it up. “I was wrong.”
Her revelation was the final blow. Tears that had been bottled up inside for years, tears she didn’t know she possessed, burst free and overwhelmed her. Chela sagged forward and might have collapsed if Magadan hadn’t taken her in his arms.
