She hiked up the too-long sleeves and shrugged. Any other day she would have taken this as a cue to engage in charming banter. She would have teased him and enjoyed watching him grow flustered. Now she picked at blades of grass.
He sat down next to her. “It really isn’t your fault.”
“You’d be the only person who thinks that. Your mother won’t even tell me if Catalina is awake, and Virgil wants to throttle me. I wouldn’t be surprised if your uncle Howard wished to do the same.”
“Catalina woke up for a bit, but then went back to sleep. She had a little broth. She’ll be fine.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Noemí muttered.
“When I say it’s not your fault I truly mean it,” he assured her, his hand falling upon her shoulder. “Please, look at me. It isn’t. It’s not the first time. This happened before.”
“What do you mean?”
They stared at each other. It was his turn to pick a blade of grass and spin it between his fingers.
“Well, come on. What do you mean?” she repeated, snatching the piece of grass away.
“She’d taken that tincture…she’d had a reaction to it before.”
“Are you telling me she’s made herself ill, the same way? Or else that she’s tried to kill herself? We are Catholic. It’s a sin. She wouldn’t, never ever.”
“I don’t think she wants to die. I mention it because you seem to think you did this to her, and you didn’t. It’s not your presence that has made her ill; it’s not you at all. She’s miserable here. You should take her away immediately.”
“Virgil wouldn’t let me do that before and he certainly won’t let me do it now,” Noemí said. “She’s under lock and key, at any rate, isn’t she? As if I could even see her for a minute right now. Your mother is furious at me—”
“Then you should leave,” he said brusquely.
“I can’t leave!”
First she considered the immense disappointment she’d cause her father. He’d sent her as an ambassador, to squelch scandal and provide answers, and she would return home empty-handed. Their deal would be void—no master’s degree for her, ever—and worse than that, she hated the taste of failure.
Besides, she didn’t dare to go anywhere with Catalina in this state. What if she should need her? How could she hurt Catalina and then run off? How could she leave her all alone, racked in pain?
“She’s my family,” Noemí said. “You must stand by your family.”
“Even if you can’t possibly help her?”
“You don’t know that.”
“This is no place for you,” he assured her.
“Have they asked you to chase me away?” she asked, standing up quickly, irritated by his sudden vehemence. “Are you trying to get rid of me? Do you dislike me so much?”
“I like you very much and you know it,” he said, his hands sliding into his jacket’s pockets again as he looked down.
“Then you’ll help me and take me into town now, won’t you?”
“Why do you need to go into town?”
“I want to find out what was in the tincture Catalina drank.”
“It won’t do you any good.”
“Even if it doesn’t, I want to go. Will you take me?”
“Not today.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“The day after tomorrow, perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“Why not make it in a month,” she replied angrily. “I can walk into town without you if you have no desire to help me.”
She meant to stomp away and succeeded only in stumbling. Francis offered her his arm to steady herself, and he let out a sigh when her fingers caught his sleeve.
“I have every desire to help you. I’m tired. We all are. Uncle Howard has been keeping us awake at nights,” he said, shaking his head.
His cheeks seemed more hollowed out and the dark circles under his eyes were almost purplish. Again she felt selfish and awful. She thought of no one but herself and did not pause to imagine that other people at High Place had problems of their own. For example, who knew if at nights Francis was called to tend upon his sickly uncle. She could picture Florence, directing her son to hold up an oil lamp as she pressed cold compresses against the old man’s face. Or perhaps other tasks were handed to the young men. Virgil and Francis, undressing the frail, bleached body of Howard Doyle, applying ointments and medications in a closed room reeking of impending death.
Noemí flexed her fingers, raising them to her mouth, and recalling, vaguely, that horrid nightmare in which the pale