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But then Geraldine had taken Jules into her arms at the very moment of her birth, and had held on to her tight ever since.
Her aunt and uncle had refused to get involved in what they called Seanna’s catastrophically bad choices. Even after Seanna died, they could not be swayed to take the slightest notice of their grandchild. They’d advocated for Seanna’s child to be given up for adoption, so that no one in the family would be forced to remember any of the unpleasantness unless they wanted to. Geraldine and her mother had tried as best they could to make them see reason, but they could not be swayed. And in the end, Geraldine had prevailed.
Because she had held that wriggling little creature against her neck. She had breathed in her first cries. And she’d understood, in a terrible and wonderful wave, that she would do anything and everything—always—to keep that little girl safe.
She could admit to herself that it was also possible that taking care of Jules allowed her to do it all over. To do it better this time, as she wasn’t a nine-year-old. And sometimes, late at night, she would stare at her ceiling after putting the baby down and wonder if one of the things that made caring for Jules such a no-brainer for her was that it allowed her to feel a great deal like the savior she hadn’t been able to play for her cousin.
Or even the big sister she’d always wanted to be, though her parents had tried. They hadn’t been able to have any other children, so when Seanna had come along, Geraldine had adopted her as her very own.
And the truth was, she knew only too well that people couldn’t save each other. They could only save themselves, and help those who asked for it.Ifthey asked for it.
But she felt nothing like a savior today. If anything, Geraldine felt like a child herself. Or a mannequin. The scrum of stylists took her over. She was marched into a bathroom suite and her hair was washed. She was given a manicure and a pedicure at the same time that one of the stylists fussed over her hair with scissors, a comb, and the light of battle in his gaze.
In the next room, she could hear the rest of them discussing her, but she wasn’t allowed to even look at herself when her hair was done. Too busy were they marching her behind a screen, demanding that she remove her dress to put on a flimsy little robe before hauling her back out from behind the screen and making her stand on the little platform.
Once again, a tide of rapid Spanish threatened to sweep her away.
“It is not so bad,” said the original woman who had spoken to her in the car, smiling slightly. “Everyone is pleased that it is only the dress that made you look so terrible.”
“I like that dress,” Geraldine protested. “It’s comfortable.”
“Comfortableis another word for surrender,” the man who had nearly fainted on the airfield chimed in then, also in English. “And if one must surrender, better to do it so stylishly, so elegantly, that in retrospect your surrender might look a little bit like a victory, after all.”
And then no one spoke to her again as they worked.
There were no mirrors in the room, a kind of graceful salon. Up on her little raised dais, Geraldine had a view out the windows. It was beautiful. The rolling hills, the incoming autumn season, the bright sky.
She had no idea why it made her want to cry. That was how peaceful it was.
They made her put on one thing, then another, and then debated among themselves as they made her turn this way, then that. There was a seamstress on hand who took whatever garments gained the approval of the crowd and tailored them on the spot, so that, in the end, everything that she was approved to wear fit her to exquisite perfection.
A notion that made her...uneasy.
“Do I get to look at your masterpiece?” she asked when a great many hours had passed, the sun was setting over the hills outside, and they had finally decided that they could take her to Lionel.
“There is no particular need,” replied the man who led her through the cottage that was no cottage at all, with its rooms upon rooms, halls filled with whitewashed walls and art, and the hint of bookshelves heaving beneath the strain of too many volumes she itched to get her hands on. The man beside her sniffed. “You must know that your opinion has not been solicited, Señora Asensio.”
But even as he called her that name that she could not accept was hers, he slowed as they walked into a sort of atrium and nodded his head toward the decorative mirror that took over the better part of one wall.
Where Geraldine saw, to her horror, that they had made her beautiful.
Inarguably so.
“Oh, no,” she whispered. “This is a disaster.”
“What did I tell you?” cried the man beside her. He clucked at her as if she had disappointed him, personally. “Callate, if you please. We are artists, you are our creation, and this has nothing to do with whatyouthink. You would wear that dress beforela ilustrísimaseñora Doña Eugenia Lourdes Rosarioherself, and this we cannot have.”
And then he ushered her with a rather ungentle hand on the small of her back, through the glassed-in atrium with orchids blooming madly and then outside, where Geraldine stopped dead.
Because there was a bit of a secret garden here, back behind this place. A walled-in, overgrown, glorious patch of paradise, where flowers bloomed everywhere she looked, the sweet air was scented with mysterious things she could not quite identify, and there were a thousand candles fighting off the dark.
And in the center of it all stood Lionel.
Looking at her with a certainintentthat made the world seem to spin again.
Oh, no, Geraldine thought again.
And not because she worried that she might faint. More that she was afraid that...she wouldn’t.
