This was the second person here who had asked me to do something for her on account of me being a man with money. I was surprised—I was a stranger to them with little influences.

“Of course I’ll talk to her.”

“But Don Cristóbal, promise me you won’t tell her I’m having Father Alberto’s child. It would ruin him.”

If only his reputation depended on me keeping a secret, but it didn’t. Sooner or later, the truth would come out and everyone would know what the town’s priest had been doing with his free time.

“I promise you I won’t tell her, but I don’t think you’ll be able to keep this a secret for much longer.”

I thought about my father and what I’d discovered last night. He’d had an illegitimate daughter with a maid. Now, his son had done the very same thing. Alberto had more in common with Armand Lafont than either one ever knew.

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 26

It was so ironic, and unfair, that someone like Alberto—a priest of all people—and this naïve girl, Mayra, were going to have a baby when they hadn’t even been trying. Not only that, but they also wanted to get rid of it. Meanwhile, Cristóbal and I had been desperately trying to conceive a child for years through amorous encounters that had turned into an item on a checklist we must complete during specific times and days of fertility. A partnership to achieve a common goal—that was what my marriage had become in the last few years.

Mayra’s news had upset me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. It had brought back so many memories: the lists of names that Cristóbal and I had come up with for our unborn children, the tight feel of my swelling stomach, the evenings knitting baby blankets, and inevitably, the blood stains in my drawers.

I would take the nausea and tender breasts if it meant that in the end, I would hold my baby in my arms. I dried my eyes. I hadn’t been lying to Soledad when I mentioned my melancholy.

“Good morning,” Martin said from behind.

I adjusted my glasses and turned to him. Mayra had left a long time ago, but I hadn’t found enough energy to get up from the rock where I sat, numbly staring at the banana peel filling up with ants.

It had been a full day since I’d last seen Martin and my annoyance with him had already dissipated. I should be angry after his offer but there was one thought that had appeased me.

If he truly was a murderer, he could’ve sent someone else to kill me after I arrived at the hacienda, or do it himself. He’d had plenty of opportunities to do so in the last week.

“What are you doing here?” he asked cheerfully.