The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (22 page)

* * *

The day the strange woman woke up, Sammy happened to be alone in the
room with her, pouring water from a pail that he filled at the rain barrel into
the little cistern his mother used in the kitchen. He heard a moan, which was
not unusual, but then the woman said something he did not understand. She was
sitting up in bed with the blanket drawn up to her chin and a worried look in
her eyes.

“
Usted
está
despierto
. ¿
Cómo
te
sientes
?
”

“I feel well, thank you,” she
said. “Where am I?”

He did not understand a word of
that; he thought she was speaking English.

“Wait here,” he said in Spanish.
“I will get help.”

He motioned with his hands for her to stay in place, then he rushed
from the house. Manuelito would know what to do. Despite the fact that Sammy
did not care for the man’s bragging ways or the way he took pride in
demonstrating superior strength, his sister’s fiancé worked for the Americanos
and could find someone to translate their guest’s words. He ran toward the
plantation office.

When he returned an hour later, Mamá was sitting at the woman’s side,
applying an herbal compress to her forehead.

“She was sitting up when I came in, but she fell back to her pillow a
few minutes later.”

The lady must have heard the voices because her eyelids fluttered and
she stared at the strange faces surrounding her. The American man, Manuelito’s
supervisor, spoke to her.

“I am an American,” he said. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes! I understand you.”

“What is your name, ma’am? Where did you come from?”

“I—” A blank look came over her face. “I don’t know.”

She clutched at her blanket again. “Where am I? How long have I been
here?”

Sammy started to explain how he had found her in the water. “
Estabas
en
el mar.
Te
trajo
a
nosotros
.
”

The plantation man started to
explain but the woman interrupted.

“The sea brought me here? When
did this happen?” It seemed she understood some Spanish but only spoke English.

The American translated.

“Two months you have been here.
You had a very high fever and were delirious at times.”

She accepted this news with a
gentle nod but when they asked her name she became agitated again.

“I don’t know! I can’t remember
anything. Not about my life or how I got into the sea.”

“There is a doctor at the
plantation,” the American said. “I will fetch him. Maybe he can provide
answers.”

But the bespectacled old man
seemed stymied as well. “She’s got no injuries to her head. Perhaps the fever
harmed her brain,” he said as he packed away the few instruments he’d brought
along. He turned to Sammy’s mother. “Did she have any personal items with her?”

“No,
Señor
, only her undergarments.”

Sammy, who had waited outside
while the doctor performed his exam, came back into the common room just then.
“There was one thing. A box.”

He located it on the shelf above
the cook stove where it had been drying, picked it up and held it out. “You had
this in your arms when I found you in the water.”

“Do you recognize it?” the doctor
asked, watching her face closely.

She shook her head. No sign of
familiarity showed on her face.

“Only time will tell,” said the
doctor as he picked up his bag. “Send for me if she gets worse. Otherwise, I’m
afraid there is nothing I can do for her.”

“Let me get you some clothing,”
Mamá said. “You will stay with us. Meanwhile, we need to call you by a name.
Sirena—she is a maid from the sea.”

“Find a skirt and blouse,” she
directed Yolanda, who did not look pleased. “She is close to your size.”

“I can help with the housework,”
Sirena said, “and I can make some clothing for myself later.”

What will become of her?
Sammy wondered. Perhaps he should consider
applying for work at the plantation. The house had been too full of women
before this one woke up and began adding her own ideas. Mamá would welcome the
help, but Yolanda had a deep crease between her eyebrows.

*
* *

Mary Conway opened the picnic basket that James had carried from her
buggy. Sunday dinners after church had become their routine, the four of them
sitting on a big quilt under the shade of the tall elm beside the church along
with other families on their own blankets.

Families. James realized he and his daughters were increasingly
thinking of Mary as part of theirs. She uncovered a bowl of potato salad and set
it beside the plate of fried chicken before handing plates and cutlery to each
of the girls.

“Hold still and let me tuck a napkin here at your neck,” she said
gently to Constance. “We don’t want to mess up your pretty dress.”

“Mrs. Johnson says there’s ice cream for dessert,” James said with a
wink at each of the children. “Her boys began cranking the freezer right after
Sunday School.”

Nancy let out a cheer and nearly upset her plate.

“All right, one thing at a time,” Mary said. “Hold that chicken leg tight
until you’ve finished it. Then we’ll think about ice cream.”

Those thoughtful words and touches, so like Elizabeth would have done.
He turned slightly and stared off across the open field to the north of the
church. Five months and he still missed her so badly that his heart literally
hurt at times. The grief would hit at the oddest moments—as he tied his own tie
instead of her doing it for him; when Nancy stared at him with Elizabeth’s
eyes; when Elvira complained that she couldn’t seem to get the pancake batter
just right, the way Miss Elizabeth always did. His eyes would water and a
strange prickle would start on his upper lip, and the only way to get past the
moment was to bite his lip and blink and make himself very busy with some
inconsequential task.

And then there were Sundays like this one. Mary bringing a homemade
dinner, serving it under the tree and the four of them sitting together and
conversing, acting like a real family. She would be a wonderful mother. A
wonderful wife, too, he suspected.

Convention said it was too soon. Mourning should last a full year. A
year, he knew, was far too short a time in which to forget the person you had
loved with all your heart, the mother of your children, the sweetheart you had
known since the fourth grade and had traveled with from the east coast to the
wild land of the Texas territory. But then his heart ached in a different way
at the sight of his daughters and the way they sometimes wandered the house
with lonely expressions on their faces.

James had to admit that he was lonely too, and that his Tuesday night
visits to Fancy were no substitute for what he really needed.

“One more bite of your green beans,” Mary was saying, “and then you may
run off and play with the others.”

Nancy seemed itchy to move but she complied. Constance had cleaned her
own plate and was picking the fried crumbles from her sister’s.

“Now when Mrs. Johnson announces the ice cream, I expect you both to
act like ladies and await your turn with manners and decorum.”

Yes, James thought. He definitely needed a wife. He took a generous
bite from the chicken breast Mary had served and watched as she gathered the
children’s plates and stacked things neatly back in the basket.

“Can we take a walk, out to the grove?” he asked. “There’s something I
want to ask you.”

* * *

Sirena carried the heavy water bucket toward the house, her blue cotton
skirt dragging against her legs in the heat of the day. Something told her that
September weather should not be this hot, this sticky. Wherever she had come
from, she suspected, it was not a tropical climate like this one. She was, it
seemed, the mystery of the Yucatan.

As happened more frequently in the month since she had regained her
health, she found herself thinking of the future, more so than the past. The
Avila family had been extraordinarily kind to take her in and she hoped that
her contribution was helping—fetching water, pitching in with the cooking and
cleaning. But it didn’t change the fact that she was not a daughter of the
household and had no real right to be there. She considered getting a job to
support herself and finding a small home of her own.

Perhaps she could teach English to the village children, although most
of them had no real use for it. Those who got jobs at the plantation were hired
as labor to tend the banana plants and the yards around the company housing
built for the supervisors and scientists who were here to study how to grow
varieties hardy enough for shipment to other parts of the world. Female workers
generally were hired only for cooking and cleaning. So far, few of the
Americans had brought their families down here, but when they did maybe Sirena
could suggest starting a small school. She seemed to remember enough of her
language and mathematics skills certainly to teach at an elementary level.

Meanwhile, she would help the Avilas prepare for Cornelia’s upcoming
wedding and do her best not to cross Yolanda.

In the kitchen she poured some of the water into a dishpan and began to
scrub the breakfast dishes. The rest of the common room had simple furnishings:
a shelf beside the stove where dishes and pans were stored, a built-in
banco
for sitting, chairs around a table, and the bed where she had convalesced which
she later learned was Sammy’s. The dear boy had slept on one of the
bancos
for weeks until Sirena insisted that she
exchange places. It was another reason she felt the need to find herself a
separate home.

She set the dishes to drain on a towel while she tidied the rest of the
room. Sammy tended to leave shoes in the middle of the earthen floor and
whichever of his three shirts he had dirtied would be draped over the back of a
dining chair. She gathered the things and put them in their correct places.

A layer of dust coated nearly everything, stirred by their walking
about, so she found a rag and began going over the surfaces. Beside the longest
of the
bancos
, a small table held the lantern
they usually lit at night and beside it sat the wooden box Sammy once told her
she had brought with her from the sea. It was not an attractive piece,
certainly more crude than the
rustico
style of
furniture found so prevalently here. The carved lines on it were fairly
straight and the rounded areas of the quilted pattern were burnished smooth
with age. The color was, frankly, ugly—a stain that had been unevenly applied
and then darkened to a murky brown. Of course, the discoloration might be
blamed on its time in the sea; it might have been beautiful once in its life.
Funny, she felt no connection to it. Why had she clutched it in her arms as he
described?

Most likely it was simply something floating in the water and she had
gripped it in a moment of desperation. Surely it was impossible that the small
object had kept her afloat. She picked it up, dusted the table beneath, then
decided to sit and have a closer look. Previously, she had not noticed the
hinged lid. It came open with a squeal of swollen wood and a shower of rust
flakes from the metal. Faint markings showed on the inside of the lid but they
were nearly worn down. The first stroke could be part of the letter V. She
worked it back and forth a little until the hinges loosened. A bit of oil could
help, but it would be better to have the hinges replaced. She supposed the box
belonged to her, but did she really care?

She started to set it back in place on the table but noticed that the
box seemed more attractive now. The wood had taken on a golden glow and it felt
warm to the touch. She raised the lid once more and looked inside, touched the
inner surfaces tentatively with her fingertips.

Almost immediately, pain stabbed at her temples. She dropped the box to
the floor and grabbed at her head.

“Sirena—
¿
Qué
pasa
?
” Sammy crossed the
room and rushed to her side.

“My head. It—”

“
Iré
a el doctor.
” He was gone before she could respond.

By the time Sammy, Manuelito,
Señora Avila and the doctor came back, Sirena felt much better. The pain had
come and gone with a jolt, leaving only a disoriented feeling.

The American doctor knelt beside
her. “Can you tell me where it hurts?”

“The pain is gone. But I have the
oddest feeling. I remember things.”

“The boat wreck at sea?” Sammy
asked.

“My name is Elizabeth, Elizabeth
Cox. I lived in Galveston, in Texas.”

Four sets of eyes stared at her.
The doctor spoke first.

“My dear Miss Cox, how on earth
did you arrive in this part of Mexico?”

She sat very still, memories
returning in bits and scraps, like wisps of cloud that formed and vanished.

“I think—” She shook her head
with a jerk. “I think there was a balloon.”

The doctor sent her a look of disbelief. The Mexicans clearly had no
concept of what on earth she was talking about.