CHAPTER 13Nothing went to waste at Hogar de los Niños. While the men assembled the brightly colored playground equipment, the ladies cut the cardboard boxes into sheets to be used for future projects.
After the women’s work was done, Caroline entertained the children with the help of one of the aides. Songs accompanied with hand and foot motions were a big hit, even when they didn’t translate well. The favorite was the “Hokey Pokey.”
With each step, Berto was right under Caroline’s feet, shaking for all his little body was worth. At one point, Caroline thought the boy’s drawstring trousers were going to drop off his nonexistent hips. He cackled in delight at her Spanish, although she wasn’t certain the words he tried to teach her were not corrupted by a childish lisp.
By lunchtime most of the equipment was up and ready for use.
Too excited to eat, the children played, the ones too big to use the new acquisitions keeping watch on the zealous little ones. The adults enjoyed a simple but delicious meal of beans and rice tortillas prepared by the cook, while savoring the fruit of the men’s labor—the ecstatic squeals and laughter of the beautiful brown-eyed children.
“So what do we do this afternoon?” John Chandler asked Blaine, after the tables had been cleared to drag in the youngsters from their new toys.
Seemingly indebted to the group for taking him in, the young man spent the entire morning with the men, either helping with the assembly or acting as a gopher. Yet, eager as he was to please, he seemed to bring out the wary, just short of irritable, side of Blaine Madison. In Caroline’s mind, there was more to Blaine’s reaction to the boy than fatherly protectiveness, although what it was, she couldn’t imagine.
“Some of us are going to try to shore up the old jungle gym,”
Blaine replied. “Father Menasco ordered the hardware but doesn’t have the hands and know-how to do the job. Then I’m going to walk up to the hacienda with Randy Gearhardt and have a look a the possibilities regarding the mission.”
Couldn’t Blaine see the boy was anxious for male company?
Caroline wondered what John’s relationship with his father was like. Distant, she’d guess, based on the young man’s efforts to please the adults, especially Blaine.
“Maybe you’d like to join us?” She couldn’t help herself. If Blaine couldn’t see the boy’s need, then maybe she could open his eyes.
They were open, she realized, and drilling her. “Us?” he repeated.
“I’ve always wanted to see a haunted hacienda.” Caroline grinned, squirming inwardly. She never thought of herself as manipulative, but her impish answer disarmed the loaded gun in Blaine’s gaze.
His hackles fell with a sigh of resignation. “I guess the more the merrier.”
By the time lunch was over, Blaine surely regretted his glib remark. Aside from him, Father Menasco, Randy, Caroline, and John, most of the kids wanted to go as well. With a distinguished leather-bound notebook, complete with calculator, Blaine looked as ready for work as the students were ready for adventure. He quizzed the priest on the way up, taking notes all along the naturally terraced, grassy slope, dotted here and there by clusters of trees. The closer they came to the hacienda, the thicker the trees and bushes became, obscuring all but an arched wall that towered overhead, housing a large bell.
“While the Señora Ortiz’s passion was for children, her husband’s was for raising Andalusian horses,” Father Menasco informed them.
“At one time, this was a working ranch, but much of the land has been sold off over the years.”
Caroline imagined how it would feel to race one of those beautiful horses up and down the slopes now occupied by goats, chickens, and little patches of garden. She could almost see their manes and tails flying in the wind the way her hair would—if it would grow past her shoulders without developing a mind of its own.
And if she could ride more than a carousel horse. There was just something about this place that sparked the fanciful side of her.
“That is what remains of an arbor that led to the stables from the casa principal.”
It looked more like an overgrown hedge of vine and weed, affording an occasional glimpse of what remained of the wooden skeleton.
Extending from the cluster of high growth around the hacienda, it led to nothing. Still, Caroline could envision it in pristine condition— a high, grilled arbor with flowering vines weaving their way through it—thick enough to ward off rain from those walking to the barn . . . or hide sweethearts long enough to steal a kiss.
“The barn was destroyed in a fire ten years ago,” the priest told them. “Since then I have kept a set of keys to the hacienda for the last two owners, and now, for the realtors . . . in case the authorities or someone needs access,” he explained.
With an energy reserved for youth, the students raced ahead and waited outside the arched entrance to the walled courtyard of Villa Mexicalli for the adults to catch up. Maybe the exertion would curtail Annie and Karen’s chatter sessions at midnight. It was one thing if the girls kept the conversation to themselves, but they kept dragging Caroline out of her exhausted stupor for comment. Dana said she should be honored they even wanted her opinion on anything, and Caroline was. She just dreaded getting up the next morning.
Unlike some fanatics who got up at the crack of dawn to jog up and down the mountainside. Maybe that’s why it was hard to tell that Blaine had a desk job. He didn’t have quite the spread that she had in the rearview mirror. On her, a jogging suit added ten pounds. Blaine, on the other hand, looked good in one.
“All right, listen up,” Blaine annouced, oblivious to Caroline’s observation.
“We are looking at the hacienda for business purposes,” Blaine went on with a no-nonsense authority that quelled the teen frolic in front of the heavy, iron-hinged gate. “This is not a romp. I expect you kids to behave as if you were on a tour of private property. No touching, just looking. Walk, don’t run. Are we understood?”
“Unless we see a ghost,” Wally Peterman proposed. “Then we can run, right?”
Blaine gave a sharp look. “Are we understood?” he repeated, military sergeant at the core. “You act up, you wait out here for the rest of us.”
After an inventory of somber nods, he gave the go-ahead to Father Menasco. The priest opened one of the huge arched oak doors with a nail-on-a-chalkboard creak that all but shouted “Beware” to the active imagination. Beyond lay a stone-paved courtyard surrounded by a beamed, arched portico, reminiscent of an overgrown, rectangular Stonehenge of the tropics. A collective intake of breath resulted at the sight of a voluptuous water nymph, as weathered and cracked as the fountain into which she’d emptied the last drop of water from her vase years earlier.
“Your ghost, Wally,” Blaine said, laconic.
Christie rubbed her arms as she stepped into the cool interior yard of the sprawling mountain villa. The boys had cajoled her into going. “She gives me the creeps.”
“Nothing a ton of face cream won’t fix,” Wally quipped.
“Or a bucket of plaster,” Kurt added.
“Don’t be too hard on her, boys. Clean her up and she’d be one classy lady . . . like Miz C.”
Caroline winced as John clapped her on the back. “Thank you, John.” She cast a dubious look at the green stuff growing under the half-dressed statue’s armpits. “I think.”
“Don’t be too hard on her, boys,” Kurt mimicked under his breath as John draped a protective arm over Karen’s shoulder, moving in ahead of the others. “Like bein’ a couple of years older makes him the authority on women or somethin’.”
The house was built in an L-shape around the courtyard with a veranda running its full length. Wide granite steps with detailed iron railing led up to the front door at the juncture of the two-story wings.
“There is a dancing room or, how do you say—” Father Menasco broke off.
“Great room, or ballroom?” Blaine suggested.
“Yes, a ballroom behind the front entrance. It would make a good gymnasium with its high ceiling. The living quarters are to one side of it and the sleeping quarters to the other. All the rooms, of course, open onto the veranda as the many doors show.” The priest’s gaze was aglow at the potential, as though he could envision the many quarters for his homeless, parentless charges.
“Definitely a fixer-upper,” Blaine said to no one in particular.
Randy clapped him on the back. “What say we see just how much fixer-uppin’ it needs.”
Whether the water nymph or Blaine’s stern warning had robbed the teens of their rambunctious mood, they were far more subdued when Menasco opened the oak-paneled double doors to the foyer of the house. A two-pronged stairwell rose gracefully from either side around its perimeter to the second-floor balcony, forming a ceiling over a first-floor frescoed archway with intricately carved dust-laden doors.
“The ballroom is through there.”
It was elegant enough, even in its state of disrepair, to make a day care owner feel like a Spanish Cinderella. The same effect had the girls ogling the faded, peeling mural climbing the stairs and continuing around the balcony above. Overhead was a large chandelier, draped with white cloth, the same kind that covered what appeared to be built-in upholstered seating in the curve of the stairwell to either side of the ballroom doors.
“The orchestra played up there”—the priest pointed to glass doors at the head of the steps—“on the mezzanine overlooking the room below. There were grand parties with millionaires and movie stars from your Hollywood throughout the last century until it left the hands of the Ortiz family.”
The house seemed to go on and on. Some rooms still had sheet-draped furniture. The ballroom came with an out-of-tune baby grand. Even in ruin, it would surely take at least a million dollars, Caroline thought, just to purchase it. Then there was the fix-up.
Chunks of plaster were missing in the walls. Tiled floors needed repair and showed evidence of leaks in the roof. The kitchen and baths hadn’t been updated since the first indoor plumbing.
Blaine had filled at least three sheets of legal paper with notes by the time they reassembled in the hall later. “The plus side is that there is no substantial amount of land with the place. Plus for the mission,” he said to Father Menasco, “as no land limits the villa’s potential to support itself . . . unless someone has beaucoups bucks to fix it up as a hotel.”
“It’s so sad that it was let go like this,” Caroline lamented. “I can close my eyes and imagine just how beautiful this must have been at one time.”
Blaine smiled at her. “If only it could be restored as easily.”
“It would take some major money and effort to pull something like this together, even if we could swing the purchase,” Randy agreed. “The labor could be volunteer, but there’s still the material cost . . . if it’s even worth trying to rebuild.”
“Actually, it seems structurally—”
A bloodcurdling scream echoed from the balcony overlooking the ballroom, where the girls had climbed to envision the swirling dancers in trim suits and lavish gowns. As the females stampeded down the steps in both directions, Caroline made a quick surveillance of the students below. Everyone but Annie, Karen, and Christie was accounted for.
“What in the world—” Blaine started.
“It’s a ghost! We saw the ghost!” Karen gasped, materializing on the upstairs landing with the other girls.
“No,” Annie contradicted, just as wide-eyed as her friend. “We heard it. It was playing the piano.”
Blaine was skeptical. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“It wasn’t loud,” said Christie. “I want to go now.”
Unruffled, Blaine walked to the closed ballroom doors with Father Menasco and Randy on his heels. “You all can wait outside in the courtyard if you want.”
Instantly, the others fell in behind them, Caroline included. To her astonishment, when the men opened the double doors into the room, she heard the distinct plink, plink, plink of the cloth-draped piano.
“Omigosh, it’s moving,” she managed in a strangled voice at the sight of the cloth being tugged toward the keyboard.
“All right, if you’re a ghost, show yourself.” Blaine’s challenge stopped the music.
“Maybe she only speaks Spanish.” Wally was not nearly as gung-ho to see a spirit as he’d been earlier.
“Quíen va? ” Father Menasco called out.
A tiny, nonghostly voice bunched up the girls against the boys, who, for all their machismo, were not that far removed from the adults.
“Soy yo, padre.
”
The drop cloth moved again, pulling away from the piano until it struggled on its own with the alleged spirit. Or sprite, Caroline thought.
“Berto, eres tú? ”
The yard-high height of the spirit dropped with a plop, its billowing cloth cover following it. Father Menasco hurried over and pulled the tangled sheet off its possessor, revealing the bright-eyed munchkin from the orphanage.
“Buenos dias,” Berto exclaimed with a grin, dissolving the former wariness and subsequent astonishment into laughter.
“You can let go of my arm now,” Blaine whispered to Caroline.
“I think our ghost is harmless.”
Caroline jerked her hand away in embarrassment. She hadn’t realized she’d latched on to Blaine in all the excitement. Not that she really expected a ghost.
Father Menasco spoke with Berto in Spanish.
“He must have followed us up here.” Heart turning to mush, Caroline gathered the happy child up in her arms and nuzzled his forehead, provoking a giggle in both, until Father Menasco’s grim expression sobered her.
“I am afraid he thought that his new mama was leaving.”
New mama? Caroline felt the blood drain from her face.
“He seems to have taken a liking to you, Señora. For some reason, he thinks you came to take him with you.”
“Cool. I always wanted a little brother,” Annie piped up.
Caroline reeled at the thought. “Father, you have to explain that I already am someone else’s mother . . . and too old to raise a baby.”
Father Menasco nodded. “Of course. And you will leave in the morning after church . . . while Berto is in Sunday school. Perhaps it’s best if I tell him then. Otherwise, the little scoundrel may stow away on the bus.”
Caught in a whirlpool of conflicting emotions, only one thing was absolute. The little boy in her arms had already stowed away in Caroline’s heart.
Blaine wanted to round up Caroline and the boy in his arms— Caroline, because she looked as if she foundered in a sea of despair, and the boy, because he’d managed to get under Blaine’s skin from the moment he’d drawn up his arm to show off his muscles and then cajoled Blaine into flexing his biceps in return. And when he wasn’t playing games with Caroline, he had shadowed Blaine, asking a question a minute about what the adult was doing and why.
Cómo se llama esto? It would have annoyed Blaine, except that when Berto handed him something a second time, he knew its name—in Spanish and English. A man could get used to a shadow like Berto. Karen was his little girl, but she had no more interest in engineering or any of Blaine’s business than he had in shopping. This bright little squirt was interested in everything.
“Up you go, kid.” John relieved Caroline of her small burden and gave a delighted Berto a horsey ride back to Hogar de los Niños.
Upon seeing Caroline still visibly torn, Blaine covered her hand with his and fell in behind the students. “I’m not trying to influence you, but women your age have children every day.”
“It’s so heart-wrenching.” She sighed, following the bubbly tyke with her gaze. “I’d take them all if I could.”
“I believe you would.” He didn’t mean it as criticism, and her attempt at a smile told him that she didn’t take it as such. “You’ve got a heart as big as the all outdoors.”
And he wanted his share of it. Blaine looked west at the blaze of color settling over the time-wrinkled mountains. He didn’t think the scar Ellie left would ever heal, but being around Caroline made it fade, escapade by escapade. Maybe it wasn’t an accident that had caused him to make a trip he’d never have gone on under normal conditions. Maybe it was ordained by the same hand that painted that skyscape and made the first timepiece in the world. As an engineer, he could appreciate that kind of perfection. As a man, he could appreciate this second chance for his heart.
But was he ready to give God a second chance? Something told him that where Caroline was concerned, God was part and parcel of the deal.