The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba - Chanel Cleeton Page 0,92

reunion. My mother isn’t the type to descend into theatrics. Rather, her fingers drift to the ostentatious pearl necklace that was her mother’s as they always do when she’s nervous. The familiar gesture brings a wave of emotion I hardly expected.

“Marina. What a surprise.” Her gaze settles on Isabella once more.

“This is my daughter, Isabella. She’s eight.”

My mother simply nods, her fingers stroking the pearls, her gaze on Isabella, and I feel a pang of guilt at having sprung this on her and not having had the opportunity to prepare her properly.

“We’ve been living in a reconcentration camp,” I continue. “We were forced out of our home by Weyler’s edict.”

My mother flinches.

“Isabella’s sick,” I add. “The situation there is dire. Please take her in. I am afraid for what will happen if she stays there.”

My mother is silent for a beat, and then she nods smoothly as though I have given her a simple request like adding another guest to her dinner party.

“Of course. She can stay in your room. I’ll have Carmela prepare it for her right now.”

Tears fill my eyes. As a mother, the desire to be strong for Isabella is paramount. But standing before the woman who gave birth to me, for a moment, I’m a child again, and the sensation undoes me.

“Thank you,” I reply.

“Is there anything else you need?” my mother asks, and in the silence that follows, I wonder if she’s hinting that there’s a path home for me, too.

I shake my head.

She hesitates, as though she might say something else, but in the end she merely nods. “Let me tell Carmela she’ll be joining us. She’ll be back in a moment to escort Isabella upstairs.”

I turn to Isabella, who looks so small and alone in this room. Her eyes are wide as she struggles to process each change being thrown her way.

I give her another hug, pressing a kiss to her brow. “You’ll be fine,” I whisper. “Your grandparents will be kind to you, and Carmela will love you. She raised me when I was a little girl. You can meet my brother, your uncle. And I’ll be back for you when I can. I promise.”

Carmela reenters the room a moment later and takes Isabella by the hand, a kind smile on her face.

“Your mother’s room is lovely. Just as she left it. You’ll have the best view of the garden, too.” She puts her arm around Isabella’s shoulders, and with my daughter’s back to me, Carmela hands me a bundle, which I take from her wordlessly.

After Carmela has led Isabella away, after I’ve walked out of the house I grew up in, my head held high, a bundle of food in my hands that I don’t know whether she or my mother thought to have sent to me from the kitchen, the tears begin to fall until my body is wracked with sobs.

As difficult as it was turning my back on my family years ago, as much pain as I felt when I sent Mateo off to war, this is something else entirely.

My heart is broken.

Thirty

Grace

At the Journal, we celebrate the extraordinary successes of 1897 in our own exuberant fashion.

They say no one throws a party like Hearst, and based on the spectacle before me, I’m inclined to agree.

Tonight we ring in the new year of 1898 as well as celebrate Brooklyn, Staten Island, and sections of Queens and the Bronx becoming incorporated into Greater New York, nearly doubling the population to almost three and a half million people, and making New York the second-largest city in the world after London.

I bundle deeper into my coat, the vicious chill battering me as the wind burns my cheeks. And still, despite the elements, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.

Once again, Hearst has proven that the Journal acts. The celebration itself had been a point of contention between all of the city’s interested parties, until Hearst swooped in in his own inimitable fashion and proposed the Journal fund and organize the event in addition to the Christmas dinner we hosted for five thousand of the Journal’s newsboys. After all, it’s been quite the year. Our paper is cited by members of Congress when they speak on the floor regarding the situation in Cuba. Evangelina Cisneros’s saga has launched the paper in a new direction, her face immortalized on the cover of our paper standing next to President McKinley. Hearst has taken every opportunity to capitalize on her story as she tours the United