Mrs. Cook held out her hand. Endless seconds passed while nothing happened. Whitney’s nerves were stretched to the breaking point. She felt like screaming, or at least stepping in to smooth over the silence. Why was the little girl responsive one minute and the next nearly comatose? What triggered her reactions?
She glanced at Mrs. Cook. The woman kept her hand out, never faltering. Finally, finally, Claire’s small hand reached out and slipped into the outstretched one in front of her. Whitney heard Gabe exhale at the same time she did. She waited until Mrs. Cook led Claire into the house and then leaned limply against the car and closed her eyes.
She opened them to find Gabe’s eyes on her face.
“Tough, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “How do you do it?”
He looked somewhere over her shoulder. “It’s not as if I have a choice.”
“I guess not.”
“She’s better around the horses. They help her somehow. Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Ever been married?”
For an instant she hesitated. The question always stumped her. Then she would remember that an annulment meant there had never been a marriage. “No,” she said.
“Why not?”
She shrugged, annoyed. “Why is that the paramount question on everyone’s mind when it comes to me? Why doesn’t anyone ask why I chose international law or whether I like to read, or if I’ve been to the Galapagos? Why always the marriage question?”
He laughed. “All right. I’ll bite. Why all of those things?”
If they were anywhere else, if the two of them had met for any other reason, she might have succumbed to that laugh. She might even have satisfied his curiosity. “I think we have other matters to discuss that have more to do with you than me,” she said, instead.
He studied her for a minute, the blue-green eyes veiled against her. “Have it your way.” He waved his hand to encompass the small parking lot. “My sisters are here and they’re on time. Given that they’re all gainfully employed, they must have considered this important enough to put everything on hold to hear what you have to say.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Relax, Miss Benedict. They’ll all be on your side.”
“I take it that your mind is made up.”
“Completely. I told you from the start.”
Whitney stood her ground. “I didn’t come here to make things difficult for you. I’m here to present a very generous offer. You can do pretty much what you want if you accept.”
“I’m doing what I want.” He squinted into the sun. “Maybe that’s difficult for a high-priced city lawyer to understand, but that’s the way it is.”
She held on to her temper and nodded toward the house. “Shall we?”
“After you.”
Seven
Mercedes pulled the last of the steaming tamales from the pot, set it on a platter with the others and ladled the spiced applesauce into a large bowl. She glanced at her three daughters seated around the table drinking cups of scalding, cinnamon-laced coffee, speaking in low, secret voices. No one who didn’t know them would believe they were related. Maybe that was the way it was when children were hybrids from two such dramatically different nationalities.
Where had they learned to talk that way, in those refined Anglo tones? Possibly from their father, although Franz had never been much of a conversationalist. They certainly didn’t get it from her side. Mexican families didn’t relate to each other calmly. They shouted at each other across crowded rooms, describing intimate details of their personal lives, bank accounts and bodily functions without regard for privacy, sensibilities or humiliation. Spanish was a language meant to be spoken rapidly and loudly without pausing for breath, the intent to eliminate anyone from interrupting the speaker.
She couldn’t hear what her children were saying and it annoyed her. She didn’t like it when they left her out. Mercedes clapped her hands. “Luz, mijita, stir the beans. Ramona, set the table. Pilar can help me carry out the food.”
Luz uncrossed her slim legs and walked over to the stove, where she gave the simmering beans a perfunctory stir with a wooden spoon. Ramona and Pilar, opposite ends of the color palette, looked at each other and remained seated.
“It’s a little late for breakfast, Mother, and too early for lunch,” said Luz. “You don’t have to serve a spread like this in the middle of the morning. Coffee and some muffins would be fine.”
“We have a guest,” said Mercedes. “Besides, your brother will be hungry. He’s been up for hours.”
“So have we, Ma,” said Pilar. She tucked a strand of tawny hair back into the twist at the back of her head. “I had an important meeting this morning.”
Mercedes frowned. She handed the plate of tamales to her youngest daughter. “So, you had a meeting. Do you think I would have called you if this wasn’t important? You can’t give up a morning to help your brother?” She lifted Pilar’s chin. “What’s that on your face? It looks like dirt.”
Pilar flushed. Her skin, pale like her father’s, colored easily. “It’s bronzer.”
Mercedes snorted. “Bronzer?”
“Yes,” replied Pilar. “It’s the newest product in our fall line. It gives cheeks some color, but it’s more natural than blush.”
Pilar was an executive for a cosmetics line Mercedes could never remember the name of. Why someone like Pilar needed makeup was something her mother couldn’t understand. Blessed with black eyes and lashes, fair skin and hair the color of warm toast, she was drop-dead beautiful the minute she rolled out of bed in the morning. “Mijito, you’re pretty all by yourself. You don’t need bronzer.”
“Makeup enhances natural beauty, Ma,” Pilar replied patiently, with the long-suffering air of someone who’d tolerated this conversation before. “If you’d let me, I could show you some tips. You’ve been wearing the same color lipstick since I was born.”
“What’s wrong with my lipstick? It works.”
Pilar sighed. “Nothing’s wrong with it, Ma.” She nodded at the plate in her hand. “I’ll take this into the dining room and come back for the rest.”
Ramona, a female version of Gabriel down to the blue eyes, jumped up. “I’ll set the table.”
Mercedes pinched her cheeks as she walked by. “You’re very thin, Ramona. I worry about you. Why don’t you eat some of those desserts you make for everyone else?”
Ramona grinned. “I’m healthy, Ma, and I still haven’t lost my last ten pounds since the twins were born.” She squeezed her mother’s ample waist. “You could lose a little bit yourself.”
Mercedes laughed. “I’m seventy-six years old, mijita, too old to diet.” This irreverent daughter never failed to coax a laugh out of her. Ramona was her child of light. No day was too gloomy, no problem too difficult. A pastry chef by trade, she had a heart like the warm butter she whipped into her delicious creations. She had given her father a scare for a few years in high school when she gathered boyfriends like rose petals and refused to take her teachers or her grades seriously, but the phase dissipated with maturity. The mother of year-old twin boys, she had settled into marriage and a career quite comfortably.
Ramona was the one Mercedes never worried about, not that she spent much time worrying about any of them. It was pointless, really. She had tried to explain to Franz that by the time children were thirteen or so, they had absorbed everything parents could teach them. From then on all you could do was hope and roll with the punches. Mercedes was good at rebounding. She had lived long enough to know that most of the time children turned out very much like their parents. Franz wasn’t so sure. Fortunately, he’d lived long enough to see that, for the most part, she was right. What he would say about Gabriel and the offer from the Austrian government, she didn’t know.
Luz leaned against the stove, her arms crossed against her narrow chest. She was dressed in her usual no-nonsense style: black boots, slim-fitting black pants, a gray cashmere tu
rtleneck and a pair of half-carat diamond studs in her ears. Her hair was pulled back so severely from her face that her dark, almond-shaped eyes tilted up at the corners. Like the others, she was long- legged and very slim. Mercedes often wondered where she had come by such thin children. It wasn’t natural.
Luz was a real estate agent, a very successful one. She and her husband, John, a certified public accountant, rattled around in a house made for children but, so far, none were forthcoming. Mercedes had given up asking. Again, it was against her inclination to spend time on a lost cause. She never interfered. Luz would get around to having children, or she wouldn’t. Mercedes had enough grandchildren to keep her happy. If only Luz wasn’t so serious. To Mercedes’s dismay, she’d turned out to be the antithesis of her name. Luz meant light. The girl had absolutely no sense of humor. It was as if she’d been born old, like Gabriel.
No, not like Gabriel, she corrected herself. There was a time when Gabriel laughed frequently and appreciated a good time like anyone else. It was Kristen who’d changed him. Kristen with her sharp tongue and her everlasting complaints and her drama queen personality had wrung out every drop of joy he was born with. She didn’t even have the decency to leave him when it was first obvious she was unhappy. Instead, she’d dragged him to marriage counselors and support groups and family therapy, insisting he behave one way and then another until he was so afraid of doing something wrong that he never got anything right.
Mercedes felt Gabriel’s pain as if it were her own. She had been sincerely sorry for his loss, but she couldn’t help but give thanks the following Sunday in church, sink to her knees and light a candle when the woman finally left him. Mercedes had been a nervous wreck until the divorce papers were finalized, hoping and praying Kristen wouldn’t change her mind. Maybe, in time, Gabriel would heal.
She smiled tentatively at Luz.
Luz did not smile back. Her voice was crisp and clear and disapproving. “Mother, what is this all about? You know perfectly well we agreed not to interfere with Gabriel’s decisions.”
“This is different.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
Mercedes sighed. “Miss Benedict said the offer was a very good one, too good to refuse. It could mean a different life for your brother and for all of us.”
“What do you mean by a good offer?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
Luz’s eyes were huge dark pools in her face. Mercedes was struck by how pretty she was. Not only were her girls thin, they were strikingly exotic. Again, it was probably their hybrid Mexican-German mix.
“Do you really think there’s anything we can say that would make him sell?”
“I don’t know, mijito,” her mother said softly. She knew how much Luz loved Gabriel. Every one of his sisters would gladly offer up much of what they had if it would bring him happiness. “We can only try.”
Luz bit her lip. “What if it isn’t right? What if he won’t be happy doing anything else?”
“He doesn’t have to do anything else,” her mother reassured her. “He can start over with enough capital to make himself comfortable. Lipizzaners aren’t the only horses in the world.”
“Why doesn’t he see that?”
Mercedes wondered, not for the first time, how to explain to this daughter who was selling lemonade on street corners by the time she was seven that, sometimes, it wasn’t about money. “Because he’s Gabriel,” was all she said.
Pilar returned for the rest of the food. “Gabe’s here,” she said, “and the woman with him is gorgeous. She reminds me of the little girl in Tom Sawyer, except she’s grown up and obviously sophisticated. What was her name, anyway?”
“Becky Thatcher,” replied Luz automatically. She and Gabriel shared a love of classic fiction. She looked at her mother. “Is she part of the plan?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, mijita. You know I never interfere in my children’s lives.” She picked up the coffee carafe. “Shall we join the others?”Pilar’s eyes met Luz’s, a question in them. Luz shrugged and followed her mother.
* * *
Mercedes patted Whitney’s arm and sat down at one end of the rectangular dining room table. “Where’s Gabriel?” she asked.
“He went to clean up,” Whitney replied. Her eyes widened at the generous repast spread out before them. “I couldn’t possibly eat another thing, not after my enormous breakfast.”
“Don’t worry,” Ramona soothed her. “Nobody expects you to. For Ma, everything has to include food. It’s her way of smoothing the waters. Unfortunately for us, it’s cultural on both sides of the family.” She patted her flat stomach.
Whitney laughed. “You hardly look overfed.”
“It’s a struggle for all of us. Ask Pilar.” She nodded at her sister, who had come into the room bearing a plate of pastries.
“What’s a struggle?” asked Pilar.
“Keeping our weight down when Ma expects us to eat ten times a day.”
Pilar groaned. “Tell me about it. It’s easier now because we don’t live at home, but growing up was a challenge.” She set down the plate and held out her hand. “I’m Pilar.”
Whitney took it. “Whitney Benedict.”
Ramona tilted her head. “Any relation to the Benedicts of Whitney Downs in Kentucky?”
Whitney looked surprised. “The very same. How do you know it?”
“When you grow up around horses, you end up acquiring information by osmosis. Your stud farm is fairly well known in equine circles.”
“Mercedes told me that none of you, except Gabriel, are in the business any longer.”
Luz spoke up. “Gabe makes the decisions, Ms. Benedict, but we all have a fiduciary interest in the business, which is why we’re here today.”
Mercedes introduced them. “This is Luz, my oldest daughter.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Luz,” said Whitney, forcing herself to smile warmly. She detected a definite chill coming from Mercedes’s oldest daughter. “I’ll run upstairs and bring back the paperwork.”
Gabriel was already seated when she returned, and despite his sisters’ protestations about their mother and too much food, they were all making a serious dent in the morning meal she’d prepared for them.
“Dig in, Whitney,” Gabriel said. “The tamales are delicious. You won’t find anything like this in the freezer section of your grocery store.”
“I doubt I could find tamales in most of the grocery stores in Kentucky,” she said. “I’ll definitely sample one, but I ate breakfast barely an hour ago.”
Luz nodded at the platter of tamales. “The sweet ones are on the left and the pork on the right. Take one of each.” She smiled. “No one will make you clean your plate.”
Whitney breathed a little easier. Her first impression of Luz dissolved under the charm of her smile. They were a very attractive family. She sat down in the vacant chair beside Luz and spooned two tamales onto her plate.
Mercedes poured her a cup of coffee. “Why don’t you tell us about this offer while we’re eating.” She chuckled. “My girls always tease me about my food, but I notice it makes things easier to swallow.”
“The offer is a generous one. It shouldn’t be hard to swallow at all.”
“We can go over the details after we finish here,” said Gabriel. “But I’d like to hear the basics, if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.” Whitney unwrapped the husk from her tamale. Sweet corn aromas spiked with an indefinable spice swirled around her. Gently she touched the light, spongy masa. Rivulets of dark red chili sauce gushed from the center. Despite her full stomach, her mouth watered. She wanted to eat, not talk. Taking a sample bite, she chewed slowly. Bursts of flavor covered her tongue and shot up to the roof of her mouth. She’d eaten tamales before, but these, freshly made and still puffed with hot steam, were nothing like the dense, dry, store variety she’d sampled on occasion. She closed her eyes and moaned slightly.
Ramona laughed.
“You have a convert, Ma. I have a feeling this won’t be the last time we see Whitney.”
Mercedes’s cheeks were pink with pleasure. “I hope not.”
Whitney set down her fork. “You truly are a magician in the kitchen, Mercedes. I’ve never eaten anything so delicious in my life.”
“A true compliment considering you’re a girl from the South,” the woman teased her.
They were all smiling, except Gabriel.
Whitney cleared her throat. “All right. This is it in a nutshell. I’ve been instructed by the Austrian government to offer you a very large sum of money for all direct, full-blooded descendants of the Carthaginian stock bred to the Vilano, and the Arab, Siglavy.”
Gabriel stared at her for a full minute before speaking. “In other words, all of my pure Lipizzaners.”
Whitney bit into her sweet tamale. “If you can call them pure,” she said when she could talk again.
“I beg your pardon?” Gabriel’s left eyebrow was raised, a sure sign to those who knew him that he was annoyed.
“Well,” said Whitney, swallowing what she considered as close to ambrosia as she’d ever come, “from what I’ve read, the breed isn’t really pure. The original Carthaginian stock was bred to the Vilano, a Pyrenees breed, and then to Arab and Barbary strains. After the Moors were expelled from Spain, horses were exported to Denmark, Italy and Austria, with fresh Spanish stock systematically added to the breed to maintain its strength, hence the Neapolitan bloodline. These became the property of the nobility.”
They stared at her, forks in midair, as she recited the results of her research.
“In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Neapolitan strain was brought to Lipizza to mingle with the descendants of the original Spanish line out of Denmark and Germany. There are six significant bloodlines in today’s Lipizzaners, dating back to eight stallions.” She set down her fork and ticked them off on her fingers. “The Dane, Pluto, the Neapolitan, Conversano, Maestosa, Favory, the Neapolitano and Siglavy. After the fall of the Hapsburgs, the horses were split between Italy and Austria and a privately owned stud farm became a government breeding farm, the Piber Farm, supplying mounts to the famous Spanish Riding School.”
The Lavender Field Page 8
