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“Is that a promise?”
She laughed with him and was sorry he’d had so little to laugh about before he’d met her. She hadn’t laughed often either. Craig had considered her far too serious. Maybe each of them had changed the other for the better in another facet of love.
Anita Lujan had been weeping since she’d received the awful news about Miguel on Sunday, and she greeted Magdalena with a hug and held on. “I am so sorry you’ve lost your father,” she sobbed. “He was a fine man.”
Maggie patted the housekeeper’s back as though she agreed. “Thank you. Is there anything I can do to help you prepare for tomorrow?”
Anita stepped back and wiped her eyes on her apron. “We’ve little to do here. Your grandmother is holding the reception at the Tibur. The ranch has always been too rustic for her tastes and her fine friends, so we’ll hold our own reception for ourselves tomorrow.”
Rafael carried their bags up to the rooms they’d used on their earlier visit. “A matador spends far too much time traveling from bullring to bullring, but you’ve got to be tired of traveling too.”
“I am.” She sat on her bed. “But I’m not thinking past tomorrow. Do you suppose they’ll read my father’s will in Zaragoza?”
“Let’s ask Santos. No, you better ask him on your own so it won’t look as though I cared whether or not you inherited millions.”
“Millions? I’ve got to be at the very bottom of the list, Rafael, and I don’t expect a dime or euro.”
“Then you won’t be disappointed.”
She was sick with disappointment at what her father had proven to be, but she managed a smile as though they were discussing money and nothing more.
At lunch, Santos showed Maggie his notes. “I’m trying to find something to say about Father that doesn’t sound trite or superficial or veer too close to the truth. He ran through women at a gallop, but everyone who knows him is aware of it. Hell, many of the matadors who were his contemporaries were just as cavalier where women were concerned.”
“I don’t think I ought to be listening to this,” Rafael said. “You want to eat outside on the porch, Fox?”
Fox picked up his plate and followed Rafael. Maggie looked down at her tepid bowl of soup and laid her spoon on the plate. “He thinks Father walked on water, and Fox doesn’t think at all, so we don’t need them.”
Santos frowned. “I didn’t mean to insult them.”
“No, of course not. Now is there something about the ranch Father loved? Did he ride, or sit on the porch enjoying the sunset? Was there something you know about him that others wouldn’t?”
He pushed his half-eaten sandwich aside. “I’d forgotten he liked to ride. When I was small, he had a beautiful black stallion, and I had a pinto pony. We’d go out on the trails near the house. We didn’t round up cattle, but I used to pretend we were knights on the way to a castle. I don’t know what he was thinking. That’s not enough to say, though.”
Maggie doubted their father could be described as introspective, and he’d probably not had his own imaginary adventures while they rode. “Maybe it will be enough to say his children loved him and that he’ll be dearly missed.”
Santos’s eyes filled with tears, and he wiped them on his sleeve. “It’s a good thing Rafael’s outside. He’d never let me forget this.”
She reached across the table for his hand. “I think you and Miguel may have grown up together. Did you read Augustín’s letters and poems for Simone? He can’t have been an attentive father, and Carmen isn’t an affectionate woman, so it’s no wonder our father grew up with a deep hunger for love. He took all he could get, and after meeting Carmen, I don’t blame him. I don’t know what his relationship was with Cirilda. Were they close?”
“No, not really. I read the letters. Augustín was a champion in the bullring, but he closed out the world here at home. That still doesn’t give our father the right to use women as though they were video games.”
She wished she could have argued Miguel wasn’t that bad, but she’d learned to trust Santos’s insights and thought he probably was. “Did he make you feel loved?”
He slumped back in his chair. “He liked the fact I wanted to be a matador and taught me everything I know, but I don’t remember him every saying that he loved me. I can’t say that, though, can I?”
“How about saying this: all of Spain loved him as a brave matador, while we loved him as the heart of our family. Thank you for all your love and prayers at this sad time, and for keeping Miguel Aragon alive in your prayers and memory.”
Santos wiped away a fresh burst of tears. “That’s good. Now if I can just say it without crying like a little girl.”
“You’ll do fine.” She waited while he wrote down what she’d suggested. “I thought I’d stay here until the will is read. Do you know when that might be?”
> “Thursday. I should have told you. Sergio Calderon, the family attorney, has an office in Zaragoza. We’re all supposed to meet there at ten o’clock. He came to the beach house several times in the last month, but I don’t know if he was simply visiting Father or helping him revise his will.”
“I doubt I’m even in the will, but I’m worried about Fox.”
“Don’t be. Father won’t have forgotten him. If Margaret hadn’t died, Father would probably still have been married to her. Fox looks like her. She was slender, blonde and had huge green eyes. She was the best of the lot. I’m sorry, I don’t know your mother. Maybe she was the best.”
Maggie laughed. “She seems to have divorced him the fastest, so I don’t believe she’d be in the running for that distinction. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She went outside to join Rafael and Fox. “What did you want to say at the funeral?”
