THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Read online

  He turned to Patricia with a smile that showed straight, strong teeth. “Is good, Señora? Perhaps is Max, su hijo?”

  Patricia reached out and gripped the boy’s shoulders. It took a great will to do it, but she smiled. “Max, the Americano, what else does your cousin say about him, Roberto? Is he okay?” She said the words slowly, quietly, and set her teeth until her jaw ached.

  “He no say no more, Señora.” He frowned and twisted one bare foot on top of the other, grinding pale dust into his dark skin. The movement freed him from Patricia’s hold.

  “I want to talk to your father, Roberto. Now. Can you bring him?” She leaned into the child’s face.

  “Si, Señora. Not now. He go to zocalo.”

  A breeze blew through the open door, tugging at her hair. She’d have helped the wind pull it from its roots if that could have calmed her soul. “Very well. Tell your father I want to see him the moment he comes home. No matter the time. Comprende? Go. Wait for him!”

  The boy sauntered out of the garden and down some stairs, yelling, “Papa!”

  Patricia clasped Rachel’s hand. She was shaking with excitement. “This is wonderful, Rache. You’ve solved my problem. I can’t believe you found someone who can take me there and I’ve got—”

  “Take you?” Rachel jerked her hand back. “What do mean, ‘take you’? That’s not—”

  “Don’t you see, this is perfect. Just what I need. Someone who knows the area. If this cousin can get me to the miners, I can make a deal with them, myself.” She got up from the table mid way of her speech and paced the small room.

  “Oh? Good idea.” Rachel leaned back in her chair. “The kidnappers. They’ll love that. They’ll probably make a trade. You for Max. Nothing like having the owner of the company in your clutches and a pretty woman as a bonus. A definite improvement over a lanky kid. Yep, they’ll love it.”

  “I don’t plan on that happening, Rachel. I’m going to get Max out of there and me with him. And Miguel Ramirez will know that he was not man enough to stop me.” The more real her plan became the more sure she sounded of her success.

  “And just how do you figure that?”

  “I’m not sure yet. The first thing is to get there, and thanks to you, I may have a way.”

  “Please spare me the gratitude. I don’t want anybody knowing I had anything to do with your hair-brain idea. Jim will have my head on a platter. A Morelos silver platter, I hope.”

  Silence fell between the two of them. Rachel picked at what was left of the cold dinner. Patricia busied herself with thoughts of preparations for going to Real.

  “Señora, you no like la comida?” Marta asked, lifting the plate still full of chile rellenos.

  Patricia held a fork full of rice in midair. It was cold and dry. She shoved it in her mouth and mumbled, “Yes, everything was delicious. Thank you, Marta.”

  The woman gave her a puzzled look, patted Rachel on the shoulder and finished clearing the dishes.

  As soon as they were alone, Rachel started asking questions. “Patricia, I know Max needs rescuing, but who do you think you are? Jane Bond? Running off with a stranger into mountains and mines doesn’t sound like the Madison Avenue, Bergdorf, ‘Oh no, I broke a nail’ Patricia Morelos I know.”

  “Thanks, Rache. Thanks for the confidence.”

  “Have you thought about the fact that you might make things worse?”

  “Worse? You sound like Miguel. My son has been kidnapped by criminals. The police at home think he’s a runaway, yet no one I sent down here could find him. Everyone down here knows he’s been kidnapped, yet there is nothing in the papers about it. No one in this whole damned country is willing to do one thing about getting him released. And the one person I thought might, may have been behind it to start with!”

  “Miguel? Why do you say that?”

  “Two things. He knew too much about who’s holding Max. And he’s trying too hard to keep me from going up there. He’s got something to hide.”

  “Haven’t we all,” Rachel muttered.

  “Don’t start, Rache. Miguel Ramirez told me in no uncertain terms that his worry is his people, not Max. He’s afraid they’ll get hurt. He couldn’t care less if I ever see my son again.” Her voice had pitched loud and high. The words hung in the air.

  “He might care more if he knew Max was his son.”

  Rachel’s voice seemed a whisper. It was the final pinprick to Patricia’s bag of wind. The will went out of her and she slumped in her chair. She had been waiting for it to happen, for that sharp thorn of doubt to gouge her strength. When she had left Miguel’s building, she was so sure she was right. There in the heat and stagnant air of the bathroom she had decided against telling him about his son. Had she been wrong?

  She picked up a small silver bell and shook it. Marta reappeared. “Coffee, Marta. On the balcony, please.”

  A breeze stirred as the sun dipped into the ocean lighting the clouds in soft pinks. They said nothing more until steaming cups were placed in front of them. On a tray with the cream and sugar was a bottle of Kahlua.

  “Marta’s trying to tell me something,” Patricia said. “She doesn’t like me to raise my voice. How about some strong stuff in your coffee?” Patricia poured a good measure of liqueur in both cups.

  While the hot brew raked her throat, she tried to rebuild her self-command. She began with an unalterable fact. Whatever doubts she might have now about not telling Miguel the truth, there was no doubt about why. The same clear reason confronted her. Telling him that he had a son would not be the secret key to free Max and make everything right. Miguel would hate her. He probably wouldn’t want anything to do with Max even if he knew Max was his son. He would think Tomas had tainted him. If she told him why she married Tomas, it would only be the beginning. Opening that door would mean opening others. The first of all the secret doors of her life. Was she ready for that?

  “Patricia, listen to me,” Rachel finally spoke. “I don’t want you going to Real, but I can’t do much to stop you. Looks like I’ve helped you, as you said, but Miguel cares too. If he didn’t, he’d leave you alone on your hell-bent road to disaster.”

  “Like the one he was running down eighteen years ago and wanted to take me along for the ride?”

  “Well, Miguel was a young idealist. He wanted to save his people.”

  “Even if it meant jail or death? For both of us? You’re forgetting how he deserted me to go protest in Mexico City. I didn’t jump at the opportunity to martyr myself along with him, and he went without me. Never even cared to know what happened to me after he left. The only ones he cared about were the poor souls his mother created as idols for him. Now he has a chance to use my son to get them everything they want. The mines. The Morelos fortune. And why shouldn’t he? What better way to get even with Tomas? What better way to get even with me for not going back to Mexico with him?” Her back went rigid as she contemplated the worst.

  Rachel gave a little laugh, breaking the tension. “I bet you never knew how I envied you back then.”

  “You?”

  “Well, it was before the suave and debonair Mr. Roger Davis arrived on the scene. I would think about you two, making out every night in that little Thunderbird Tomas had given you.”

  Patricia almost choked. “Is that what you thought?”

  “Of course, why not?”

  “Because it didn’t happen.”

  “What do you mean? You got pregnant with Max. Are you saying it was immaculate conception?”

  “No. Max is Miguel’s all right. It just wasn’t the way you imagined it.” She was serious again, somber.

  “Tell me about it?” Rachel’s voice matched Patricia’s.

  “Oh, it seems rather ridiculous now. Things have changed so much. Wonder if young Mexican men feel the same today as Miguel did back then.”

  “How?”

  “Expecting the girl to be a virgin.” There. She had said it. What more should she tell Rachel? Would she unde
rstand?

  Rachel laughed. “Male chauvinist pigs.”

  “Miguel wasn’t just disappointed in my ‘being ruined’. The conclusion his jealous mind jumped to was what did us in.”

  “He thought you had been Tomas’s mistress?”

  “Give the lady a star,” Patricia said, reaching her hand out into the black night as if she could pluck one from the heavens.

  “So that’s the real reason he left that summer. Why wouldn’t he believe you?”

  “He tried. I think he wanted to. In the end, when I wouldn’t go to Mexico with him, that was his proof, his out, and I was ‘guilty as charged’.”

  “Did you tell him who it really was?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because my life before I met Miguel was none of his business.”

  She thought about how Rachel was always so sure that truth could turn trash into treasure, could right the wrongs of the world. Maybe Rachel didn’t understand how a lie was sometimes necessary because she depended on being told how things were instead of seeing things for herself. That still didn’t mean that people didn’t have a right to privacy. A right to secrets. She wanted to get back to talking about Max and how to bring him home. She thought about the night he left. For once she could prove Rachel wrong. “So you think Miguel would have understood if I had bared my soul and told all?”

  “Yes.” Rachel’s head nodded once. An exclamation point.

  Patricia slapped at mosquitoes that found her arms now that the breeze had died. “Just like Max understood?”

  Rachel jerked her head as if she had been struck. “What do you mean? You told him about you and Miguel?”

  “No. Just some things about me. The night before he left.” She sank into a chair and kept talking, trying to drown out the echo of her son’s voice. “He was upset about the cave-in. Actually, he was raving. About the mines not being safe. About the poor and the rich. You’d have thought this kid who loved caviar at six and got a Corvette for his sixteenth birthday had the inside tract on poverty. Like he was the only one. When I said I also cared about these miners and their families, he had the nerve to ask me how I could, when all I’d ever known was money and power. I didn’t even think it out. I just wanted him to stop accusing me. So I told him just how wrong he was.”

  “Exactly what did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t live with you after my parents died. That my family didn’t have any money and I had actually lived in a foster home. I told him about Elsie and Jeff. How poor we were. I even told him about coming to find you that day.”

  “I should still be angry at you for that.”

  “What? Coming to your house?”

  “No, for not coming until five years after you were in D.C. I guess if you hadn’t seen my engagement picture in the Washington Post, you wouldn’t ever have come.”

  “Well, I had reasons,” she said, quietly.

  Rachel turned toward Patricia, her eyes blank, but intense, as if she wanted to see into Patricia’s soul or at least into those missing five years. Patricia had tried to tell Rachel about why she left Alabama and why she didn’t look her up immediately, but the words would never come. Shame had buried them too deeply.

  Bats swooshed through the air feeding on mosquitos.

  Patricia broke the silence with a laugh. “Do you remember how tongue-tied you were that day, trying to explain who I was to your mother?”

  Rachel’s cheeks dimpled with the memory. “She was so sure she had met you before. She even called you Dorothy. If you hadn’t called me first, I probably wouldn’t have believed it was you. I didn’t know how much your looks had changed, but your voice sure had.”

  “And you’re always kidding me about my Southern accent.”

  “I didn’t say you had lost all of it, but as Mrs. Tomas Morelos, it didn’t take much to convince Mom you were not Dorothy Tucker.”

  “Max had a hard time believing I ever was.” Patricia drifted back into the memory of that night with her son. “He kept staring at me like I was a stranger. I thought he was listening, understanding, but he—” She cupped her hands around her knees and drew them to her chest. “He said he didn’t know who I was anymore. Then he walked out. Next morning he was gone.”

  “I’m sorry, honey.” Rachel rubbed her hand down Patricia’s arm. “He’s just a kid. He’ll give you another chance. He’ll even be proud you had it tough when he thinks about it. Max has always rooted for the underdog, the losing team.”

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Patricia asked.

  “What?”

  “Miguel and Max. Like father, like son.”

  Marta interrupted and asked if they wanted anything else. She took away the coffee cups when they said no, but left the Kahlua and two small glasses.

  Patricia watched the stars brighten in the darkening sky. “I never told Max the truth because a child needs to know he comes from good people.”

  “Max isn’t a child now, Patricia. He can handle it.”

  “Can he?” she whispered, looking from star to star, as if asking them.

  “Sure, try him,” Rachel said.

  Patricia nodded as if Rachel could see her. Yes. That’s what she’d do, she thought. Sure. Next time she saw her son, she’d tell him all about what a wonderful reunion she and her father had when she was fifteen.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ALABAMA 1962

  Dorothy flipped the metal dividers on the jukebox selections. Rachel sat across the table. It was the first Saturday of the new year and Rachel had just come back from the holidays. All the talk was about the President being shot and how sad that he wasn’t there for Christmas with his family.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Dorothy,” Rachel said. “I’d forgot about your Mom and Dad.” Her hand reached for Patricia’s. Fingers touched and squeezed, their signal for a smile.

  In the four months they had known each other, Dorothy had confessed to Rachel that Elsie and Jeff were not her mom and dad, replacing them with loving parents who died tragically when she was six. The story grew in details drawn from books she read.

  Rachel had told Dorothy about being blinded in a car accident when she was fourteen. She had described how her life changed to solitude and darkness, how she was terrified leaving her parents and her home in Virginia. Dorothy consoled her friend, knowing her perfect parents would not have sent her away.

  “What you want to hear?” Dorothy tossed her raisin-colored curls to one side, propped her hand against her cheek, covering pimples. She looked at Rachel, at peaches and cream complexion. Not with envy so much as puzzlement. Rachel couldn’t even see her face. Wouldn’t matter if it was covered with a million zits. Dorothy wasn’t sure why she didn’t feel sorry for Rachel. It had something to do with things evening out.

  A loud screech interrupted her thoughts.

  “That damn nickelodeon stuck again?” Elsie called out from the kitchen. “I’ll fix it, Elsie,” Dorothy said and squeezed in behind the machine. She pulled the plug from the wall. An icy wind circled her, as someone entered the diner.

  “Are you Elsie McFall?” A man’s voice came out of the cold. “That’s me. Who’s askin’?”

  “Name’s Cecil Tucker. Pleased to meet you.”

  Dorothy looked at the cord in her hand. No current flowed

  through it. Yet, she was electrified, paralyzed.

  “Likewise. What’ll you have?”

  “Coffee. Black.”

  A cup and saucer clattered. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, I’m looking for somebody. My daughter, Dorothy.” She threw the black line away as if it had shocked her, stumbled

  against the machine, then moved around it, eyes flashing. “Pa? Is that you?”

  “Sure is, little ‘un. How ’bout a hug for your ole man?” Dorothy glanced at Elsie, then at Rachel, unseeing and yet

  knowing too much.

  “Well, little Doe. Been awhile, ain’t it?” Flat moss-green eyes


  stared at her. She didn’t move. His arms folded around her. Coarse

  cloth scratched her cheek. The smell of mothballs and stale whiskey

  choked her.

  “Rachel, go in the kitchen and call Jeff to fix this machine.”

  Elsie’s voice shook.

  Rachel felt her way out of the booth and through the swinging

  doors. Cecil sat back on the stool. Dorothy stared at him, her eyes

  burning.

  “Where you been, Pa? How long you been out?”

  “I been home awhile, but—can’t believe how you’ve growed.

  Spittin’ image of your ma. Same dark eyes and hair.” He looked

  back at Elsie, ran his fingers through greying, brownish-red hair. “I

  been tryin’ to find you. Never knowed who had you. Hank and Billy

  joined the Army. Don’t know where Jackson is. Just went off, the

  Bakers said.” He sipped some coffee.

  “What happened to the twins and . . . the baby?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know, for sure. Preacher Johnny took them,

  but I heard tell his missus was poorly and they give the kids up to

  the county people.”

  “Couldn’t you find out where they are?” Dorothy fought tears.

  Her nose pinched inside. She sneezed.

  “Well, it ain’t easy, Doe. Them folks like to keep things secret.”

  His cheeks sunk beneath high bones and creased in waves around a

  smile marred by tobacco-stained teeth.

  “How did you find me?”

  “Oh, I knowed—well, somebody that knowed somebody.” He

  kept his eyes on the counter, as Elsie refilled his cup. “You want something, honey? A cherry Coke or float, maybe?”

  she asked Dorothy.

  “Thanks, not now,” she said, then mouthed the words, Where’s

  Rache? as she nodded toward the coat and cane hanging on the

  coat rack. Elsie nodded back, then picked up Rachel’s things and

  disappeared through the swinging doors.

  “I got a surprise for you, Doe. I come to take you home for a late