The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,103

a good man. He cares for me very much. I haven’t done anything wrong. We love each other.”

I could have dealt with anger, but the sadness in her eyes nearly undoes me.

“Oh, Marina. He may be a good man, but what kind of life will he offer you? Living in a little hut in the country somewhere while you work in the fields? What sort of life will your children have? He seemed like a nice enough boy, which is why I never objected to you playing with him when you were too young to know better and there were no other playmates to be had in the country. But he’s not for you.”

“That’s not true. He’s everything to me.”

“Then you would choose him over your family?”

“I would rather I didn’t have to choose at all. Why can’t I love you both? Why can’t he be part of our family, too? Why does it have to be like this?”

“Your father would never accept him. You know that. The shame that would fall on this family would destroy our position in society, everything we have worked for.”

“There’s no shame.” I lift my head an inch. “There’s no shame in love.”

But even as I hoped, wished, they would stand by me, she speaks the truth. We live in a rigid society that assigns people to certain strata based on various details of their birth and economic station, and there is little to be done to change those circumstances.

I was foolish to hope things would be different.

“Your father had another husband in mind for you,” she says.

It’s common for marriages to be arranged in our circle, but this is the first I’ve ever heard of it.

“Who is it?”

“A friend of his.”

“Which friend?”

“Carlos Carbonell.”

“The banker? He’s father’s age.”

“He would be a good husband to you. He’s a good man, a true gentleman. He’s smart and he has influential friends. He would give you financial security, and as much as you can in uncertain times such as these, he would keep you safe.”

“No. Absolutely not. I won’t marry someone I don’t love. I won’t marry someone else. I’ve made my choice.”

Her expression hardens. “You come here speaking of your desires and your heart, but what about obeying your parents? Your father will never approve of this marriage. He will force another or send you away before he allows his daughter to marry Mateo Sandoval.”

I should never have tried to reason with them. I should have just run away with Mateo when I had the chance.

“You cannot force me to marry someone else. I will not. And I would go mad in a convent. Please.”

She’s quiet for a moment.

“Then you need to leave now. Before your father comes home and finds out about all of this. I won’t lie to him to protect you, but I won’t stop you if you leave now.”

I am to walk out of here with nothing but the clothes on my back if I choose Mateo.

“You need to think hard about this, Marina. You will no longer be part of this family. You’ll be abandoning everything.”

I swallow past the tears in my throat. “I understand.”

* * *

—

In the weeks after Luz’s death, I am filled with a grief unlike any I have ever known. With Isabella gone to my family and Mateo’s whereabouts unknown, I am more alone than I have ever been.

I briefly contemplate going to the countryside to join the revolutionaries. They say there are women wielding machetes among their ranks, others like Rosa Castellanos, “La Bayamesa,” providing healing to the wounded and injured. But even as I contemplate the action, I can’t bear the thought of being so far from Isabella, the glimpses I sneak of her sustaining me through this difficult time. I am called more and more to ferry messages throughout the city, the network of households passing notes between them under the auspices of hiring me to do their laundering increasing steadily following the explosion of the Maine. Everyone is desperate to point a finger at the Spanish in order to draw the United States into war, and the intrigues carried out throughout Havana are all designed to tilt the tide of war in our favor.

Carlos Carbonell sends me a note asking me to meet him at his residence one afternoon in early March, and I hurry over there.

When I arrive, there are trunks stacked near the front door.

“Are you going on a trip?”

“I am leaving the country. The American diplomatic delegation is being recalled