Allison, where have you been?” Magda was awake and making breakfast—although the sky was still dark, it was already early morning. The look on her face when Allison and José entered the cottage was one of great relief. “Joshua has been frantic.”
Allison rushed to Magda’s side. “Joshua came back?”
“He couldn’t sleep and went out for a walk. When he returned, you were gone. He went back to search the forest for you. I told him José would be looking for you, too, but he insisted on going himself. ”
“And I must return to search for Isa,” José said, pacing the small room. “I must find her before that father of hers—”
“But first you must eat something,” Magda insisted. “You need your strength. You do not know when you will be able to eat again.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he said, finally taking a seat at the table.
Allison, still in awe of Magda’s handsome brother (Becky’s father!), sat across from him and tried to digest all that had happened since José had found her. She could kick herself for not having guessed earlier. Of course, Becky was Isa’s daughter. All the clues had been there, if she’d only paid attention. Doña Ana, when she first saw her, had believed her to be Isa. She and Tere had dismissed the mistake, blaming it on the woman’s drugged and confused state. Then there was the way Don Carlos acted around her—hostile and almost frightened. He must have begun to suspect who she was and feared his secret would somehow be revealed. No wonder he didn’t want her caring for Isa. If Don Carlos had begun to suspect who Becky was, eventually, Isa might, too. And that was why Becky’s face had looked so familiar to her: Becky resembled the seventeen-year-old Isa in the painting.
On the way to the cottage, José told Allison how he had discovered Don Carlos’s secret: For the first day and a half of his arrival with Don Carlos’s buggy, he hid out in the forest, keeping an eye on the estate while he waited for Isa to get his message—the ruby cross—and trying to figure out his next move. He didn’t want to contact Magda right away for fear she would worry and try to talk him out of doing anything dangerous. But on the second night of his return, with no sign of his beloved Isa, he realized he needed to confide in Magda and to find out whether she knew of Isa’s whereabouts.
When he finally decided to approach his sister, Magda had company—Becky and Joshua, who he later found out were bringing her the ruby cross. He waited until Becky and Joshua were gone, and was sure Magda was alone, before approaching her. That night, Magda told him all that had happened since he had been shanghaied, and brought him up to date on what had happened since Tere had returned from San Francisco with the cross. When Magda explained that Sadie was blackmailing Don Carlos, José had felt in his gut it had to do with him and Isa. He asked Magda for the ruby cross and gave it to Sadie in exchange for her knowledge. Sadie was more than willing to betray Don Carlos. She told José that Don Carlos had paid Ned Thompson to kill him and to get rid of the baby. But Ned was no murderer. Instead, he devised a plan to take care of both matters without bloodshed. José was shanghaied, and the baby became a blessing.
His wife, Ruth, had given birth to a baby girl, Rachel, only one week before Becky was born. Rachel died two days later, and Ruth was devastated. When offered the opportunity, Ned brought her a new baby—one who needed love and nurturing and a home. Ruth raised the baby until Ruth died of consumption. Soon after that, Ned married Sadie. Two years later, Ned died during an influenza epidemic, but before he died, he confessed his secret to Sadie. Though Sadie wouldn’t admit it, José remembered her jealousy of Isa. She hated the Cardona Pomales family and saw a way to make Don Carlos pay. She could get rich at the same time.
That night, while Allison was out looking for Joshua, José had returned to Magda’s. It was then that he confessed to Magda about his visit to Sadie’s and what he’d found out about his daughter. Magda then told him what Allison had said about Isa’s fight with Sadie and asked him to keep an eye out for Becky while he was looking for Isa. He had been as eager to find his daughter as he was to find his beloved.
When Allison looked up from her thoughts, she found José’s gaze fixed on her. She felt her cheeks flush.
He smiled. “Forgive me for staring, but you look so much like your mother ... when I last saw her. And, after all, it is not every day one meets a fourteen-year-old daughter one did not know one had.”
“I just wish I had guessed earlier,” Allison replied. She meant that she, Allison, should have guessed. But José misunderstood.
“It was probably just as well you did not,” he said. “How could you have confronted Don Carlos on your own?”
“Maybe Tere could have helped.” Allison realized the moment she mentioned Tere that she was her aunt, or rather, Becky’s aunt.
“Ah, Tere. She certainly has grown, hasn’t she?” he said, glancing at Magda. “She was only a child when I last saw her. Fortunately, as it turned out, because she wasn’t able to recognize me.”
“She has grown into a strong-spirited young woman and a good friend,” Magda said.
“I am glad you were well taken care of while I was gone.” Then José turned his attention back to Allison. “While I finish eating, perhaps Rebecca can tell me more about Isa’s encounter with Sadie Thompson.”
Allison told José about her afternoon with Joshua as they spied on Sadie, trying to find out why Sadie was blackmailing Don Carlos. She ended by telling him how she had tried to stop Isa, but Isa had disappeared into the forest.
“It was fortunate you prevented Isa from killing Sadie,” said Magda. “Imagine what your lives would be like if she had been a murderess...”
“Very fortunate,” José said somberly. Turning to Allison, he asked, “While Isa spoke to Sadie, did she give any indication of where she might go next?”
Allison felt embarrassed at what she had to confess. “Isa ... Isa hasn’t been well. She’s been obsessed with finding her baby—me, I guess—and about meeting you. We all thought ... I mean, no one knew ... we thought it was all in her head...”
José nodded sadly. “But now that you know, can you make any sense of what she said?”
“She just said she was going to meet you—” Allison gasped, remembering. “She was going to wait for you at your secret place. She said she’d go to the ends of the earth and wait for you.”
José’s eyes opened wide. He leaned forward and grabbed Allison’s hand, squeezing it none too gently. “Think carefully, child. Did she say she was going to ‘the edge of the world’?”
“Well ... yes, but I thought it was a mixed metaphor”—the look of confusion in José’s eyes made her restate her sentence—“I mean I thought she got the phrase wrong. In English there’s an expression: going to the ends of the earth. It means—”
“Sí, sí, I know what it means,” he said, waving away her words. “I do not know how I could have forgotten. The edge of the world was our secret meeting place: al borde del mundo. She named it that because when you stand at the edge of the cliff, it feels as if you are standing at the edge of the world. That must be where she is. I must go to her.”
At the mention of the word cliff, Allison’s heart seemed to stop. The blood rushed from her face. “Cliff? What cliff? Magda, could it be—”
In a rush of Spanish, Magda asked her brother about the cliff. Then she turned to Allison. “It is the same cliff—the one you call Devil’s Drop.”
Allison felt the room spin. She leaned into the table, gripping the edge until her knuckles turned white.
“Rebecca?” said José. “What is wrong? Magda, help her. The child looks ill.”
“No,” said Allison, sitting back, “I’ll be all right. But you must hurry. The earthquake ... the cliff ... Isa ... you must get to her before dawn.”
“What is she talking about, Magda? What earthquake?”
“José, Becky has a premonition—a very strong one—that there will be an earthquake this morning, and that anyone near the cliff ... will be killed.”
José threw back his chair and in two steps was at the door. He turned to Magda. “I must go. Take care of my daughter.”
“No, wait!” cried Allison. “I have to go with you. I have a terrible feeling that that’s where Joshua is, too. Looking for me.”