Marion E Currier Read online

  "Sorry. I was just thinking of my best friend in Miami. She should have been here for this, but one of us had to stay behind and do the work." I turned in my seat to make sure I would keep my attention on the detective, rather than let my mind wander again by staring at the band of houses and forest floating by. "We have a lot of marketing projects for big clients and she figured I needed the break more than she did."

  "Nice friend. Guess you owe her."

  "I probably do."

  We passed the last few miles with me asking him questions about the local drug trafficking business, which seemed to be as abundant as the coffee crops once were. Back out in the humidity, we kept talking about my work at the marketing firm until we had wandered quite deeply into the increasingly dense forest. Although we followed a marked walkway, I felt my pulse accelerating as I recognized the sweet chanting high above us that was so familiar to me. Instinctively, I stopped and looked up.

  "You like the melody." I heard the smile in Valentín's voice.

  "I do," I replied, my eyes still scanning the gently moving tree tops.

  "It's the Coquí."

  "Really?" I stopped my search, looking at Valentín's amused face and thinking of the tiny frogs I'd seen online. Inexplicably to me, they seemed to be a major symbol of the island. "A frog sings this beautifully?"

  The detective laughed, nodding. "Yes." He caught me off guard as he grabbed me by the arm, turning me so that my back leaned against his chest. "Let's see if it'll sing for us again. Normally they sing at night or after the rain. This one is a little out of sorts, but maybe we'll get lucky," he murmured into my ear. "If it sings, listen and tell me what the chant sounds like." We both stood still for a while, but everything stayed quiet. I was about to wind myself out of Valentín's embrace when the confused frog started to sing again in plain daylight. Its mesmerizing sound made me fall in love with it.

  "Koh-key," I finally whispered so as not to disturb it.

  "That's how the frog got its name," Valentín said.

  "It chants a lot better than it looks."

  "I won't argue with that." He took me by the hand. "We're almost where the old plantation used to be." The trail ended on an airy opening that was overgrown with low bushes and ferns. "Rumor has it this is where the main plantation house stood."

  I pulled my hand out of Valentín's and walked carefully inbetween the growth, trying to picture the building I recalled from my dreams sitting here, but finding it impossible to conjure up.

  "These silk-cotton trees over here are native to the island." Valentín's words made me take my eyes off the ground, following the sound of his voice. "This over here is Honduran mahogany. Come on." He nodded toward the woods and started to move ahead. "We used to reenact the clashes of the Taínos and Spaniards here that we heard about at my grandma's house."

  I left the opening rather reluctantly, but figured I'd said enough goofy things for one day. Mentioning that I'd rather keep staring at the ground to see if maybe I'd get a sense if this was the plantation where this guy I see in my dreams worked after fleeing San Juan probably would have pushed my credibility over the edge. Instead, I followed Valentín obediently, listening to him extolling the virtues of the various trees around us. Under the green canopy of the thick growth, it was surprisingly refreshing. I slowed down, enjoying the surprising coolness.

  Valentín stopped his nature lecture and back tracked until he reached me. An apologetic grin tugged at his mouth. "I haven't been here in years," he said. "I'd forgotten all of the fun we used to have here when I was little. We used to picnic in the opening, did I tell you that?"

  I shook my head, unable to keep a smile from sneaking into my face as his enthusiasm resurged.

  "We'd pretend we were plantation owners," he said, referring to himself and the three brothers he'd told me about on the ride, as well as an uncountable assemblage of cousins, nieces and nephews. "As we got older, we'd bring girlfriends here to make out." He chuckled apologetically. "No offense, but you ladies are such suckers for romance. So when we'd tell the girls about the old fallen tree that some couple had carved their names into eons ago, it sped up the process considerably."

  "What tree?" I felt a jerk in my chest.

  "One of the silk-cottons," Valentín said. "It's probably still here. Nobody's moved it for hundreds of years, I can't imagine anyone doing anything to it now. I'll show you."

  He stretched out his hand again. I did not hesitate to take it. We wandered off the main path, and I trailed half way behind him as he zigzagged sure-footed through the greenery. Our trek made me think of following Luz into the woods, of how both Rafael and I had been amazed at the ease with which she knew her way around. My chest tightened at the thought of her name, and yet the walk I was now taking seemed to lack only her presence to make it the three of us. Even though Valentín clearly wasn't Rafael, the twists and turns through the brush became more and more familiar with each step until I wanted to scream for the detective to stop, because I had the sneaking suspicion that I didn't want to see what was at the end of the road, but it was too late.

  "There it is," he exclaimed triumphant, letting go of my hand to climb to the fossilized trunk. Many of the smaller branches had rotted off with time, the larger ones were mostly broken. It looked like a war casualty with its extremities shot to pieces. I approached it carefully, swallowing hard as I watched Valentín peel some moss off the middle part of the trunk.

  "Here," he said, brushing his fingers over the spot a few times to remove the young growth.

  I walked around the trunk, moving out of fear of being exposed more than actual want. The names were literally etched in stone after all of these centuries. Luz and Jagua. I stared at the carving, my fingertips frigid despite the unrelenting heat as I carefully brushed them over Rafael's other name.

  "Hello there," I mouthed, keeping my head turned down so Valentín couldn't see me blinking back a tear. My head was reeling as I pressed my hand across the length of the word, wishing its image would remain embedded in my palm when I lifted it off. Proof that Rafael was not just a figment of my imagination. He was real. In my heart of hearts I had always known he was, but looking at his name carved into this ancient tree threatened to make me weak in the knees. A photo of the carving would have been unbearable to have; something that could slip out of my control, making Rafael's connection to me more vulnerable than I could abide at this moment. It was just as well that I felt that way as I had forgotten my camera at the hotel and we'd left our cell phones with cameras in the car. At least this way there was no need to invent any excuses of why I wouldn't want to have a photo of a 500-year-old declaration of love – even if it was to the wrong woman as far as I was concerned. I snapped straight as I felt Valentín's hand on my back.

  He inclined slightly, staring at me with a soft smile. "Looks like it still works," he said as he reached up to wipe the tear from the corner of my eye. Before I knew what happened, his hand found its way underneath my chin, turning my face until his lips easily reached mine.

  My eyes closed instinctively, but not because I wanted to kiss Valentín. I needed to see Rafael. Right here. Right now. To assure me that there was still hope for us. The deep dark pools of his eyes were only visible behind my closed eyelids, and for too short a moment I saw them close enough to be able to make believe that the warmth that radiated from Valentín's lips was his. But the smell was all wrong. The cologne on the detective's skin pushed Rafael's image away until I was no longer able to keep my mouth pressed against Valentín's. With a gasp, I pulled back, staring more wide-eyed than I wished. Difficult as it was, an attempt at a quick recovery smile was necessary to stop the pain from coming out in an uncontrollable sob.

  "I hope you're not going to begrudge me this, just because I took advantage of the fossil," Valentín asked.

  "I…no…I don't. I just didn't see it coming, that's all."

  He nodded, looking much as I imagine he did as a teenage boy. "Been a long time since I heard th
at," he said, "but if it makes you feel any better, that was how most of the girls reacted."

  "Most of them." I whistled, still struggling, but pushing along to change the focus to him. "Just exactly how many did you bring here?"

  He easily moved to my side as I started to back away from the trunk. My fingers were burning with the desire to run them over Rafael's name again and again as I knew there was no way I would find this tree again on my own. But I also didn't think my heart would be able to handle it.

  "Not that many really," Valentín said. "Maybe ten."

  "Ten! And that doesn't seem like that many to you?"

  "Don't make me sound like a horrible womanizer," he said, laughing. "I was sixteen, seventeen years old then and most of the girls wouldn't let me get any farther than you just did. Trust me, at that age it's natural for a guy to keep on trying until he hits the jackpot."

  I managed another smile, banning all other feelings to stay in the forest for now.

  "Did you ever hit the jackpot?" I asked.

  He grimaced. "Sort of. I ended up marrying the girl that finally let me go all the way, but the marriage only lasted until a year after graduation. I have never brought anyone here since. Until now."

  Our drive back toward the coast was mainly a blur to me, with chatter I could not have repeated if my life depended on it. By the time Valentín took me back to the hotel, the heat of the day had faded with the setting of the sun. We'd stopped along the way for dinner and he insisted on walking me up to my room.

  I faced him as we stood in front of the door. "Thank you for taking me out there today."

  "Anytime," he said. "Sorry I didn't do better on the yucca plantation, but at least you seemed to enjoy the forest."

  "I did," I replied, although the turmoil the visit left inside of me seemed to suggest otherwise.

  Valentín pulled a card out of his back pocket. It had his work number printed on one side, and his home and mobile numbers scribbled on the back. He handed it to me. "I'm working tomorrow afternoon, but maybe I can show you some other sights the day after."

  I took the card. "You already had this prepared in your pocket?"

  "Just in case," he said, the dimple creasing his cheek. He leaned in to say good night, but this time his lips did not brush over my cheek. I kept my eyes open, shortening the kiss to more of a friendly gesture rather than risking a rerun of our moment in the forest.

  "Good night," I said.

  He stood there, another grin playing with the edges of his mouth. "You're not going to give me your number, are you?"

  "You mean you didn't get it from the registration card?" I opened the door.

  "I noticed you were from Miami," he said. "Memorizing all of your personal detail and then using it to get in touch with you technically would make me a stalker, and I'd probably have to arrest myself."

  I turned around, a lopsided smirk on my face. "While that is a sad tale, I guess you'll just have to trust me then that I'll call you in a day or two."

  He gnawed on his lip, nodding. "Looks that way."

  "Good night, Valentín."

  Chapter 7

  With just the continuous warbling of the overhead fans stirring the night air, it seemed like a small eternity as I stood inside the dark hotel room, my back against the door as if I were making sure that Valentín would not follow me.

  Perhaps it wasn't so much me holding up the door as it was holding me up. My mind rewound today's memories to the moment in the Rio Abajo Reserve, when my fingers traced Rafael's middle name. The rewind made me dizzy, and my chest heaved stronger and faster until a sound so guttural and primal escaped my mouth that I found it difficult to reconcile it with my body and my capabilities. The moment from the reserve refused to stay captive in the woods any longer. It met up with me and now sapped the strength from my legs as I slid down to the floor, hyperventilating behind my hands which I threw in front of my face to stifle those awful noises. I could make them less audible, but I was unable to stop them completely.

  The unleashed roller coaster of emotions inside me was draining, yet I allowed it to roll until it – and I – were done. When there was nothing left but silence, I opened my eyes to the room's semi-darkness.

  "He's real," I muttered, needing a voice outside of my head to say it out loud. "Rafael is real." I repeated these three words over and over until I was so thoroughly torn between giving in to giddy euphoria and panic about what to do next that the best I could do was scramble up from the floor and crawl onto the bed. I rummaged through the purse by my side until I found my phone.

  I had no idea what time it was, nor did I care…although I probably should have, when Elena groggily asked who the hell was calling her after midnight.

  "You already took your sleeping pills," I said, instantly guilt-ridden as I knew only too well how impossible it was for Elena to fall asleep.

  "What gave it away," Elena asked, slurring into the phone. Those little white pills of hers might make her sleepy, but even they couldn't take the sarcastic edge out of her.

  "I'm sorry," I said, genuinely contrite and now surprisingly clear-headed. "Let's talk tomorrow. Maybe you can go back to sleep if I hang up now."

  "No, no, no, no, no." The tab of a Coke can snapped open and I grimaced. How in the world could she down that sweet, room temperature goo at this hour? Not to mention that I pointed out to her on more than one occasion that this made her sleeping pills about as effective as treading water was to the passengers of the Titanic.

  "There must be something good on your mind if you're calling me at this time of night," Elena said, forcing me to refocus.

  I sighed under the realization that I was actually exhausted and probably should have waited until morning to call my friend. But then the words just rolled off my tongue without my prior approval. "Rafael is real. He's not just someone I made up in the deeply warped crevices of my mind, Elena. I saw his name carved into a tree today. He carved it. With his own hand."

  "Were you watching him do it?"

  "Yes."

  The word hung momentarily by itself in the room. I remembered the day or better the night when I was there with him and Luz. I didn't mean to remember it, what with her having been there. Those were the dreams I fought the hardest to forget during waking hours. But now I couldn't help it flood back as though it had happened just last night.

  Rafael had rewarded Luz with a kiss for rescuing him from the venomous spider. My kiss, since I was the one who flicked the fern that made her look and notice it in the first place. The injustice had made me pout. And when he pulled out the knife and began carving the heart with their names, I'd moved every branch within my reach to make him slip up. That probably accounted for a few of the broken off twigs on the fossilized trunk. But it hadn't mattered. Rafael's hand was steady, as if he were creating another one of his lovely pieces of jewelry. By the time he was done, my heart had melted and I stood looking at the carving along with Luz.

  "Now you'll have to marry me," he'd whispered. "Or else you'd be making a liar out of me, and I don't think you would want to do that, would you?"

  "No," we both replied, her not wanting to make him a liar and me not wanting him to propose marriage to Luz. Watching her face cradled tenderly in his hands had made me jerk away ,and I'd dinked my head on the bedpost, waking myself up.

  Elena cleared her throat on the other end of the line. "So did you speak to him?"

  "To whom?"

  "To Rafael." There was no more sign of sleepiness in Elena's voice. "You just told me you watched him carve his name in a tree. Did you go up and talk to him?"

  I squirmed. "It wasn't like that. I mean I did see him carve his name into the tree, but not today."

  "Come again?"

  "It was in one of the dreams," I explained. "But Valentín took me to a nature reserve and he knew of the tree where Rafael carved his name."

  "You told him Rafael's story?" Elena asked, alarmed.

  "No. Valentín told me of a tree whe
re someone carved a heart with his and her name…a while back." I needed to measure my words more carefully, but Elena wasn't born yesterday.

  "Which her?" She asked.

  My lip curled back and forth between my teeth while I searched for the right words. I'd never mentioned Luz to Elena before. But I couldn't think of any way around it now.

  "Of the woman…he married." I tried to sound casual.

  "Rafael's married? When did he get married?" Elena practically shouted into the phone.

  "Some time after they carved their names into the stupid tree."

  "You mean I sent you off chasing after a married man?"

  "Hm."

  "Melissa!"

  "What?" I sat up on the bed, beating the pillows into a comfortable shape before stuffing them between my back and the headboard.

  "You of all the people I know are the last one who would think it's okay to go after some married guy. What is wrong with you? How long have you known Rafael's married? And how can you be that desperate? When you developed a crush on that guy at the hospital….you know, what's his name, your internist…Dr. Amanto…your interest in him stopped the second you found out he was married. And now you're jetting off to Puerto Rico to chase a married man? That's not like you. Where are you? Maybe I can get someone else to cover for a day or two and I'll come and get you."

  My mouth hung open as I listened to my usually cool, calm and collected friend rattle on so wildly over something she apparently considered her fault, since she was the one who had put the bug in my ear about chasing down Rafael, that I felt it best to wait until she ran out of steam. It took a while, but finally there was quiet at the other end.

  "Are you done now?" I asked.

  "I don't know yet," Elena grumbled.

  "Would it help if I told you that Rafael and Luz married a long time ago?"

  "Only if you told me that his wife is either currently married to someone else or is no longer alive."

  A smile warped my mouth. "Luz is no longer alive," I said truthfully.

  Elena grunted before taking another swig of her Coke. I could picture her sitting in the dark on her bed, and it was a strange comfort that the dreams weren't the only thing that hadn't changed since we were teenagers.