he knew enough about life mates to realize how highly combustible they were. One touch could be enough to set them off and have them tearing at each other’s clothes.
They were both silent at first. Ildaria had no idea what G.G. was thinking, but she was fretting over where to begin her explanation for her lack of experience. In the end, she just admitted, “I don’t know where to start.”
“Just start at the beginning,” G.G. suggested.
Ildaria nodded. “I guess it starts with my mother then. She was apparently something of a wild child. My abuela—my grandmother—said my grandfather was very strict, and my mother was always rebelling against his strictness. At sixteen, my mother decided she’d had enough and ran off with her boyfriend, telling my grandparents they’d never see her again.”
When G.G.’s eyebrows rose dubiously at that, she smiled wryly and said, “Yeah. Famous last words. She popped up a year later with me in tow. I was six months old. She’d been three months pregnant when she left, but too ashamed to tell them.”
“Ah,” G.G. murmured with understanding.
Ildaria nodded. “Anyway, had my grandfather still been alive, my abuela thinks things might have turned out differently, but he’d suffered a massive heart attack and died six months before. The same day I was born as it turns out. My abuela always thought that was important for some reason.” She shrugged. “Anyway, Abuela took us in, and agreed to help raise me, but only if my mother stopped drinking and partying and got a job.”
“But she didn’t,” G.G. guessed.
Ildaria shook her head. “I gather she was there for less than a month before she found a new boyfriend to move in with. My abuela begged her to leave me with her, but she refused and dragged me along. It was the first of many such moves. I guess it was the same pattern over and over. New boyfriend, she’d move in, taking me with her. They’d drink and party and fight and fall apart, and then she’d land back at Abuela’s with me three to six months later. I don’t remember any of that, but Abuela says the first couple of men were mean drunks and verbally abusive, which was bad enough, but then my mother moved on to men who were physically abusive.
“Same pattern,” she added with a shrug. “She just came crawling back to Abuela with bruises and whatnot rather than in a high dander about whatever the latest boyfriend had done. My abuela tried to talk to her, worried about her but also about me. I hadn’t been hit yet by any of the boyfriends, but she felt it was just a matter of time. She begged her to not move in with these men. Just live with her and date them. But my mother was headstrong.”
Sighing, Ildaria turned her cup slowly on the island before continuing, “And then one day, when I was four, she didn’t crawl back to Abuela’s. Instead, one early morning, one of my mother’s neighbors brought me to my abuela, explaining that my mother was very sick and asked that she please look after me for a couple of days. Once she felt better, she would come fetch me back.
“Abuela wanted to go speak to my mother, but had to leave for work and the neighbor assured her my mother was fine, just under the weather and unable to look after me properly. So, in the end, my abuela decided she would check on my mother after work and since she didn’t have time to find someone to babysit me, she took me to her job with her.”
G.G.’s eyebrows rose at this news and he asked, “Where did she work?”
“She was the head cook on a large plantation owned by Ana Villaverde,” Ildaria explained.
“And this Ana didn’t mind her bringing you to work with her?” G.G. asked.
Ildaria smiled at the suggestion. “My abuela was an amazing cook and sought after by rival plantations. I think her boss pretty much let her do what she wanted.”
“Ah,” G.G. murmured with understanding. “Good employees are hard to find.”
“Si, so anyway, she took me with her and kept me in the kitchen while she cooked. Apparently, everything was fine until late afternoon when her boss, Señorita Ana, came into the kitchen to meet me. It came out then that my mother wasn’t sick, she’d been beaten very badly.”
“You told them?” G.G. guessed.
“No.” Ildaria shook her head, but she didn’t explain how they learned it then. Instead,