“Who is Maria Carmen?”
Roman pointed to the house where Lupita lived. “The daughter of Francesca.” Roman shook his head. “Max and Oscar and Maria Carmen, the threeamigos.” He looked away. “I was very young, but I remember how beautiful she was, like Lupita but also not like her.”
Was.I felt a chill over my skin. “What happened to her?”
Roman crushed out the cigarette on the trunk of the tree. “When Max—when Tía Concha died and Dusty Clark took Max to live with him—”
I held up a hand. He’d lost me again. “Wait. Max’s mother died?”
“Sí. I was just seven year old. I remember a long black auto pulls up, takes Max away right after we buried her.”
Oh, Max. I knew what it was like to lose your mother. And I’d thought I was the only one keeping secrets. “So that’s when he went to live with Dusty Clark?”
“Sí. And Maria Carmen, she left here also. Two years later, when she turn sixteen, she ran away to Max.”
“She was in love with Max?” It was like coming in halfway through a film and having to catch up on the story.
Roman shook his head. “No sé. Sometimes. And sometimes she was in love with Oscar.” He waved a hand toward his own home. “She didn’t want to be Mexican, didn’t want to obey her father,work in the fields, or do laundry until she was old and bent like the women here. She wanted more.”
I had the sinking feeling that Maria Carmen’s story didn’t have a happy ending.
“She stay with Max and his father. They give her clothes and let her live in the big house. Oscar begged she come back, but she say no. She had chosen Max. Then, three years ago, Max telephoned thesociedades. He tell Oscar...” Roman swallowed hard.
My heart tightened like a fist. Suddenly, I knew the rest of the story. Three years ago, Dusty Clark had died, rolling his automobile off a cliff on Canyon Road. And not alone. He’d had a woman with him. I’d been sitting in the pharmacy in Odessa when I read it in the newspaper. “She died with Dusty Clark. In the accident.”
Roman’s eyes were overbright. “And that is not all of it.” He looked away, as if wishing he’d never started this game of truth.
“Please, Roman.” I grabbed his hand. He had to tell me the rest.
“Max kept it out of the papers but... Maria Carmen, she was pregnant.”
My mind slowed, stunned by his words. Pregnant. With Max’s baby.
“The last time we saw Max was the funeral. Oscar was out of his head. He beat Max bloody, told him it was his fault. Max... he didn’t fight back. He just let Oscar hit him, over and over.”
Oh, Max. I understand now. If I’d been picked up by anyone else on the road but Oscar. And now I was here. And he had to face everything he’d lost.
Roman smiled ruefully. “You win,chica.”
I slumped down, suddenly exhausted. I hadn’t won anything.
Roman looked into the dark. “It is late.”
He was right about that. Too late for me to make it up to Max. Losing Maria Carmen had broken his heart and then, when he’d offered it to me, I’d stomped it into the ground. “I have to find him.” I didn’t know what I’d say, but I had to see Max again, now that I knew.
Roman picked up my hand. “I wake you in the morning when they to go church. I take you to Max then. But maybe you give me little kiss now, to thank me for saving you?”
My look answered that plain. Roman smiled sadly and shrugged. He walked me back into the house, holding the door and tiptoeing past his mother sleeping on her cot in the kitchen. He whispered,“Buenos noches,”and I slipped up the stairs to my room. I lay down on the bed, and even as tired as I was, my mind spun like a whirligig.
Max. This was why you seemed so lost.
His father, Maria Carmen, his child, all gone in one fatal moment.
You should have told me, Max. About family you couldn’t face. About regrets. If only I’d known.
I stared into the dark. Should haves. If onlys.
I have them, too, Max. And plenty of them are about you.
