[NOTE: THIS STORY WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED WITHOUT PROLOGUE 2 OR 3. GO BACK AND READ PROLOGUE 2 AND 3 IF YOU MISSED THEM.]
A/N: This story is complete. MUCHO thanks to Noda2 and QueenNaberrie for being most excellent betas.
Prologue 1
He'd done it!
Diego had finally found the courage to tell Victoria about his secret identity! In spite of a pounding heart and the feeling that he was sure to imminently lose his most recent meal, he had looked her square in the eye and said the two words that had scared him silly for the last several years: 'I'm Zorro.' And the best part was that she hadn't immediately laughed in his face. The fact that she'd been too surprised to do much of anything wasn't important now. What was important was that he'd done it!
Even though he'd finally made that revolutionary decision to act, he later realized that he'd basically done nothing to change his situation: he was still waiting with bated breath for news of her thoughts on the subject of Zorro's identity, was still sick with fear of her eventual rejection of him now that she knew her hero was in reality the boring Diego de la Vega, was terrified that her anger was the only thing he would have to look forward to now... but still he'd done it!
The knock on the hacienda's front door the following day heralded what could possibly be her with her response to his brazen confession. He was so frightened that he was unable to move from his seat in the library, and had to rely on Felipe to answer the door. That was alright: it was how it should be. Felipe had been helping him to untangle his messes for years. Now was no different. It truly amazed him how much he already owed the young man, but Felipe never called in his debt. He simply continued to be the best support that any man could ever hope for. In many ways, he owed Felipe his life several times over, just as he owed his father, owed Victoria.
Now Felipe answered the knocking without commenting on how his mentor looked. Diego was so green that the teen was afraid the caballero would faint if this wasn't news at long last from Victoria.
It was news, alright, delivered not by Victoria, but by a strange boy from the pueblo. Diego was as pale as the single, folded sheet of paper that Felipe handed to him a moment later. With a shaking hand, Diego slowly took the note from him, gave a nervous swallow, then tore it open and began to read.
In the next second, Diego had turned whiter than white. He crumpled the paper, breathed deeply for a moment, then thrust the note at the confused Felipe. Without a word, he headed for his bedroom at the back of the hacienda.
Puzzled, and now terrified in his own right, Felipe smoothed the crumpled note that Diego had propelled into his hand and read.
Diego,
This is to tell you that I'm still thinking.
This is also to tell you that I just received word from my brother Ramon in Mexico City that his wife Juliana is sick, and to beg my help with his 2 children during her illness. I must go. It will be some months before I return. You will have your answer then.
Victoria
That was all. There was no word of scorn or comfort, love or friendship, hope or defeat in her note. There was only the information that she was leaving for the foreseeable future. She hadn't laughed at Diego outright, but then, she hadn't done or said anything at all, not really.
That sick feeling from before accosted Felipe again: he didn't blame his mentor for running to his room to hide from these new facts. He stared at the note, willing himself to find something more in it, some nugget of hope. But there was nothing, only a fairly useless note. A note that wasn't refusal, amusement, or anger. It was less than that. This wasn't anything.
Diego would now be forced to wait for several months' time to discover her frame of mind as to his unprecedented confession. It was as if she didn't already know that his disclosure had taken every ounce of courage in him to even make.
Then Felipe took a sudden indrawn breath as inspiration hit him. The barren tone of this note - it wasn't as if she didn't already know about the courage Diego had needed to utter his words... it was as if she didn't care.
That thought sat like a lead ball in his stomach. No, Felipe didn't blame Diego at all for running away. He felt like running away, too.
Z Z Z
Two years later:
Victoria had left the next day for her brother's in Mexico City, and Diego had waited patiently for many long months for Victoria to return. But Victoria didn't return. It was years later now, and she still hadn't returned or contacted anyone in Los Angeles in any way. She'd simply disappeared.
Which was an unacceptable turn of events in the life of the young caballero. Determined to find her, Diego traveled himself to Mexico City, armed with his many drawings of Victoria, sure that he would discover her whereabouts almost as soon as he arrived. Surely someone knew where she was.
But no one did. Hours turned into days, which turned into a week, which became weeks. Doggedly determined, Diego spent every hour that he could showing his drawing of Victoria at her Los Angeles tavern to anyone who would pay attention.
That was how he found himself standing just outside yet another Mexican church as he spoke to yet another Mexican stranger that he'd met on yet another Mexico City street. "Have you ever seen this woman? She's missing, and I'm searching for her. Any help you can give would be appreciated."
The stranger studied the picture, carefully scrutinizing every aspect of it, but her sorrowful gaze met Diego's eyes in what was becoming a familiar stare. The shake of her head was as final as what her eyes had been trying to convey; she hadn't seen Victoria, either.
Diego sighed and let the woman disappear into the crowd in the street. He'd been full of hope and determination when he'd begun this search in Victoria's last known location. He knew that it was a miracle he'd even reached Mexico City, what with the instability of the new Mexican government changing every few months. But now, even with that original heartening miracle, after fruitlessly searching the unfamiliar city for weeks, his hope was dimming at last.
At first, he'd gone to the Alcalde, hoping against hope that he could help him. But the Mexico City Alcalde had been as unhelpful as de Soto had ever been. Next, he had frequented the local taverns and inns, assuming that Victoria wouldn't have been able to withstand the draw of another tavern, even a foreign one. When that had proven useless as well, he had taken to asking the doctors, both connected to the local hospitals as well as free-lance medical practitioners. If the situation hadn't been so dire, he would have enjoyed talking more in depth with several of those professionals, but his determination refused to let him squander even a moment.
Now, many moments later, he had taken to asking anyone he saw on the street if he or she knew Victoria or her whereabouts. At long last, his determination was growing tarnished and dull. With it, the hope that had buoyed his sagging spirits began to sink into what was becoming a familiar depression.
No one had seen her. No one knew where she was. It was if she'd vanished into thin air. Victoria Escalante had ceased to be, like she'd been winked out of existence by some cataclysmic event.
But the memory of Diego's heart was bigger than just such an event. It was infinite. He obviously wasn't searching hard enough.
A deep breath later, the depression once again at bay, determination and hope surged inside him. Diego start his search anew.
Z Z Z
Three years later:
It had been five years now since she had sent that note, then disappeared. Diego finally had to face the truth: no matter what she had promised in her note, Victoria wasn't coming back.
It didn't matter if she was dead, had simply relocated, hated him so much that she wanted out of Los Angeles for good, or was invisible. She was gone; end of story.
She hadn't even surfaced once in five long years to deal with her tavern. For the businesswoman Victoria had been, this was tantamount to being hung!
But that point did mean one thing for Diego that he didn't fully like to admit, even to himself: whether or not Victoria was alive or dead, she was gone - it was time for him to get on with his life.
Which was ironic. There was no life without Victoria.
Prologue 2
"Diego, can I talk to you?"
The plea, hissed in an urgent whisper, curled around Diego's ears to momentarily block out the pleasant hum of conversation at what had become one of the coveted events to the Los Angeles elite: a de la Vega supper party.
Trying to behave as if he had not just been appealed to in the most ardent whisper, Diego smiled and continued to study the painting on the wall that he was currently facing. The water in the glass he held barely shimmied, attesting to the calmness of his hand, but his heart was just beginning to quicken its pace as Señorita Lolita Melendez moved to stand closer to him, increasingly agitated.
"Diego?" This second whisper snaked out of the semi dark in the library. "Are you listening?"
Not wanting to draw attention to the fact that Señorita Lolita was now standing uncomfortably close to him, Diego forced himself to take a tiny breath instead of stepping away from her. He recalled his recent vow to get on with his life without Victoria in it, and refused to let his feet take him a single inch from the clearly distressed woman, no matter how instinctive such a move was. Besides, he had never been able to resist a distraught woman, even as Zorro, and now was no different.
Pretending to continue his study of the painting on the wall, Diego turned another fraction away from his fellow party revelers to give the señorita his full, albeit quiet, attention. "Something's troubling you, Señorita?"
Another whisper came to him on the breeze blowing through the open windows directly across from them. "I need to speak with you. But not here. Your stables - 15 minutes?"
The stables! Diego hadn't met a woman alone in the stables in... well, never. He shuddered at the image of getting caught in such a clandestine maneuver at this late date. Such a secret rendezvous could potentially sully the name of the woman in question, could ruin her reputation, could ruin his reputation, could...
Then he gave a soft, ironic snort. If his father saw his son sneaking off to the stables with a woman in tow, he would cheer, not get angry at Diego's clearly abandoned sense of decorum.
But Diego kept his disquieting thoughts to himself. A quick glance at the mantel clock to note the time, then a nod of his head was all it took for her to breathe more quietly beside him. "Thank you, Don Diego. Until then." Señorita Lolita drifted off into the crowd like a puff of smoke.
Fifteen minutes later, that puff of smoke had solidified into one utterly terrified señorita. She wasted no time on polite chit chat once she had materialized out of the surrounding dark. "Diego, I'm in trouble."
Diego's brows furrowed. "What kind of tr..?"
"I'm pregnant."
Well, this came as a shock! It wasn't every day that women told him they were expecting a baby. He instantly wanted to retort, 'What am I supposed to do about it?' but his overdeveloped sense of propriety wouldn't allow him to be quite so unfeeling on the subject. His brow puckered as his puzzlement increased. "Congratulations, Señorita! I hadn't heard of your marriage. Who..?"
"That's just it," Lolita hissed. "I'm not married!"
Not married.. and pregnant. He took her hand for a useless squeeze of sympathy. "Oh. I see your problem."
The fingers in his hand were icy in what should have been a sign that this situation would soon devolve into something he wasn't going to like. But Diego had long since stopped noticing the details in his life. Zorro would have been sorely disappointed in him. That is, if he was around... which he wasn't, and hadn't been since Victoria's disappearance.
There were rumors, of course. It was too much of a coincidence that the man in black and that tavern owner love of his had vanished at roughly the same time. So, it was obvious that they had run away together, or that they had married in some secret ceremony, or that they had been married for years and had six children together, or that they had...
The list went on and on, with the certainty that she and Zorro had somehow ended up together. I wish, was the bitter thought that now accosted Diego's mind. But he quickly banished it and returned his focus to Lolita. "What can I do to help, Señorita?" he asked with an amount of concern that made him proud.
That's when Lolita grew even more serious. "Diego, I'm going to ask something outrageous. Don't think I've gone loco, por favor."
What was she talking about? "I promise, of course, but..?"
"Will you marry me?"
The silence that met her inquiry was complete.
Finally, Diego quietly burst out, "Are you loco?"
Lolita dissolved into something close to tears. "Diego, you promised!"
Diego was far from feeling remorseful. "I know I did, but you're definitely loco!" he said in a rasping, forceful whisper. "How can we possibly marry? You should marry the father of your child, not me!" And what would a marriage to anybody else mean to his dreams of Victoria miraculously reappearing someday in order to marry him? He couldn't possibly..!
"Diego, she's not coming back."
It was as if Lolita could read his mind. The quiet resolve of that declaration cut through his thoughts and straight to Diego's heart. He paused in his plea for her to summon her common sense to stare in utter helplessness instead. "I don't know what you're talking about." In spite of his attempt to hide his continuing hopes for his future, he still sounded small, and little, and young, and naive, and hurt all at the same time.
Lolita sounded none of those things. "Yes, you do, Diego," she firmly asserted. "It's time to let her go."
Her calmness was at odds to his abruptly thundering heart. "I don't have anybody I need to let go." Then inspiration hit. "Unless you mean my mother?"
The scathing look she sent to him was only partially concealed by the night. "Of course that's not who I mean. Let's not pretend, Diego. I don't have the time."
Oh. Well. In that case... "I still don't know what you're talking about."
Suddenly, she angrily gripped his hand in hers. "Do you take me for a fool, Diego? I never saw you as anything but the most noble of gentleman who would do anything to help someone in trouble!"
She was yelling at him, her furious whisper slicing the night with each brittle word. It was the first time someone had yelled at him since... since... "Of course I don't think you're a fool," he slowly insisted.
"Then don't treat me like one!" At his apparent lack of comprehension, she added, "I'm talking about Señorita Escalante."
"It's rumored she's with Zorro."
"Maybe... though there's a man right here she should be with instead."
So... Señorita Lolita didn't automatically think he was Zorro. Yet she had obviously witnessed his feelings on the subject of Victoria. Rather than horrifying him, as he'd always expected such a disclosure would, it simply made him curious. "Who else knows?"
At that, Lolita's lips curved upwards in a sad smile. "Just me." Then she thought to amend, "I haven't told anyone, if that's what's worrying you."
Diego's brows puckered again. "Does it show?"
"Of course not," Lolita quickly refuted. "I don't even think your father knows, not really. And I'll never tell him. But that's the point."
She'd lost him again. "What is?"
Lolita growled a breath at having to explain. "I'll never tell a soul. That's my deal. You marry me, be a father to my baby, and you'll be free to keep on loving Señorita Escalante."
Diego's voice was sad and had a sense of finality in it. "But I won't be free to be with her."
Lolita gazed at him in sympathetic misery. "You're not with her right now, Diego."
Diego didn't say anything, but could only stare at Lolita in anguish.
She matched his distress with here quiet appeal, "How long do you plan to put your life on hold?"
He had the sudden sense that his life had always been on hold.
"I promise to be a very understanding wife: you can keep loving Victoria, and I'll keep loving Jorge."
Why did that name sound familiar? It was familiar enough to jar him out of his stupor. "Jorge?"
Lolita nodded. "Jorge Hidalgo. He's one of my father's tenet farmers."
A tenet? But then, if she was in love with..? "Does your father know about him?"
"Of course he does. I wouldn't be here, asking you to marry me, if I didn't absolutely have to!"
Sudden understanding burned through Diego. He was familiar enough with her father's temper to know what he was asking. "What did Don Eduardo promise to do to him?"
Lolita audibly swallowed. "He... said... he would... kill him... unless he disappeared."
More understanding sliced through Diego. "Is that why he joined the military last month?"
Lolita's desperate nod was unmistakable, even in the dark. "He's stationed at Santa Barbara to fight Indians."
He would be better off to fight with the Indians, was Diego's silent comment, but again he kept his thoughts to himself. "That's commendable, but that doesn't..."
"Don't you understand?!" Lolita hissed into the night. "The moment my father finds out that this baby belongs to Jorge, it won't matter that he promised to disappear - my father will kill him anyway, and it will be my fault! Then he'll come after me and the baby - it doesn't matter if we hide, if we move to America, if we go to Europe - he'll hunt us both down if it's the last thing he does! We'll never be safe! The only thing I can do now is get married to a respectable caballero who won't cave in to his demands that the baby is his grandchild and should therefore be his to raise as he sees fit. If that happens, my baby will turn into another Melendez to hate the world, and I can't bear that! So please! Do this one thing for me, Diego! I promise you won't regret it."
Far from being persuaded, however, Diego was still horrified at what she was suggesting. "Besides my feelings for Victoria, you don't love me!"
"I know that!" Lolita said in aggravation. "And I'm truly sorry about Victoria. As sorry as I am about Jorge. But there are more important matters here!" When she saw that he still wasn't convinced, she added the one thing that was sure to jump start his life, "All I ask is that you give my baby some name other than Melendez."
It was such a simple request, heartfelt and sincere. She asked that he give only his name, not his heart. "I will never love you," Diego whispered in a despairing voice. He already knew that he was a one woman man, and his heart had long since decided that Victoria was the woman for him.
"I will never love you, either." She said it in a subdued, matter-of-fact voice. "Please do this for me!" The appeal sounded like she was sure that her temperamental father was even now searching for her, and repeated, "Please."
And there it was again, that plea for his help. It was as if she knew that he couldn't withstand pleas for aid. Here was another opportunity to lend his assistance to someone. He would like nothing better than to help anyone in a worthy cause, and he couldn't deny that thwarting Don Eduardo Melendez's ridiculous ideas had its merits. It was akin to thwarting the Alcalde's wild schemes. Eduardo Melendez was a notorious cheat, a thief when it suited him, and, Diego suspected, a murderer, though his wealth had always protected him when it counted. It would definitely thrill him to whisk Lolita and the baby right out from under that man's nose.
It would also get his own father off his back about marrying and producing grandchildren. Don Alejandro knew nothing of his son's inner flame for Victoria Escalante He'd thought his son had been searching for a lost friend when he'd gone to Mexico City several years before, and still didn't understand at all his son's reluctance to marry and settle down.
Marrying Lolita would also solve several other quandaries. As she had already said, he would continue to be free to love Victoria for the rest of his life; he would not have to pretend affection that he didn't feel for a wife he didn't love. She had also promised to not load him down with unwanted feelings of affection. He wouldn't have the guilt of knowing that he was making someone else as miserable as he was, even as he was unable to change his own heart. He didn't want to be miserable, but he couldn't help loving Victoria, and Victoria couldn't help being gone; the mess that had been born that day several years before with her terse note could not be undone.
"Por favor... please," Lolita begged in a voice so soft that he almost didn't hear it. "I don't know what else to do."
Instead of telling her his decision, Diego made another point. "Marriage is for life... what happens when this Jorge of yours comes looking for his child?"
"That won't happen," Lolita firmly assured him. "He's too frightened of what my father will do to me and the baby to willingly put me in that kind of danger."
"What about you? You may grow tired of being married to someone you don't love."
"So might you," she countered. "I can't answer for you, but I can assure you that I will never grow tired of the man who finally rescued me from my father. You're my only hope, Diego."
He had never been someone's only hope. Zorro had, often, of course, but not Diego.
And for the first time, he found himself actually considering Lolita's proposal. But, he argued with himself, marriage was a lifelong commitment. Given that, plus his feelings for another woman, how could he possibly marry her? And what if Victoria suddenly reappeared?
Then again, what if she reappeared, but was married to someone else?
He hadn't thought of that before this moment. He didn't think he could stand to see Victoria married to another man.
Yet... Even if she was married, he assumed that he wouldn't be. If he and Lolita did this crazy thing, how could he ever forgive himself for not hanging on forever to his hope to somehow miraculously spend his life with Victoria?
But... Lolita's life depended on what he did right now, and so did her child's. Given that, how could he not help her?
Victoria would never forgive him if he didn't, even an absent Victoria. She would say that she wasn't worth the possible consequences.
She's not coming back. Lolita's words echoed once again in his mind. Victoria was gone. Jorge was gone. Don Eduardo was here, even now at the de la Vega hacienda, a guest of the dinner party. He already knew about Jorge and his daughter. It was conceivable that he also knew about the baby, and was harboring a concealed promise of a terrible temper explosion and who knows what fate for Lolita... for the baby... for Jorge.
And all Diego had to do to stop all this from happening was say one little word.
Praying that Victoria would forgive him, and that someday he would be able to forgive himself, he whispered, "Alright, let's do it. Yes."
Prologue 3
Before he knew it, it was done. Diego was now a married man. Married for life to a woman who was not Victoria. Despair would have engulfed his heart right then and there, but somehow that expected depression never quite transpired.
Oddly enough, Lolita was the one who made certain that his usual Victoria-depression didn't take hold of him as early as his wedding night. Diego was simply too busy talking to Lolita that night to be depressed.
He found a certain amount of relief at finally being able to talk to someone other than Felipe about Victoria. Though the young man had seen the agony of the romance from the very beginning, even he couldn't sympathize with his patron like a fellow adult could. What was really gratifying to Diego was that Lolita was embroiled in her own messy love affair and could easily sympathize with him. She talked about Jorge just as much as Diego talked about Victoria. The amount of understanding between the two about their loves was much more encompassing than Diego had ever expected it to be.
Lolita told him about how she and Jorge had met. "I was out riding one day, and there was this man fixing a fence, or trying to fix a fence. He didn't have enough hands do do what he needed to do. So I offered my help. It would only take a minute, after all, and then I would be back on my ride, which was my only escape from what I called 'The house of debauchery.' Father often had house guests who just as often took liberties with the single ladies of the house when he supposedly wasn't looking. I've been groped, propositioned, assaulted, and humiliated, but never proposed to," she wryly admitted. "It's a relief to be able to be inside a hacienda without having to worry about who else is inside the hacienda."
Diego was surprised that it had been that bad for her for years, yet he had never heard about it. "Could the Alcalde not do something?" he asked in astonishment.
The question made Lolita bark a laugh. "What was he going to do?" she rhetorically asked. "The Melendez estate is like a sovereign country under my father's rule. Besides, he was in cahoots with Ramone, and de Soto just leaves him alone so that he won't have to deal with him."
"What about your mother? Surely she has some influence over your father."
Another barking laugh. "My mother died when I was born - she bled to death. I call it 'The Great Escape.' I sometimes think that she did it on purpose. What better way to leave, after all? So, it was just my father and me, and I learned early on to just stay as far away from Father as possible." She gave her head a definitive shake. "Besides Jorge, you're the best thing to happen to me."
No wonder she had wanted to marry him. The de la Vega hacienda must seem like a breath of fresh air after her own home.
"Do you have a knife on you?" she asked next in a cryptic request.
"A knife?" What was she on about now?
"Si," she impatiently answered. "We need to take care of the bed, and I'm afraid that if I don't do it now, I'll forget."
Diego was confused. "The bed?" He glanced at his masculine bedspread, thinking that it might be time to update it (he'd had it for a long time), but he couldn't think what she meant by 'taking care of the bed.'
Exasperated, Lolita held out her hand. "Si, the bed! Surely you're not that naive, Diego?"
"Naive? About what?" His perplexed inquiry accompanied his handing over of the small knife he kept to open his mail. Lolita grabbed it, and he watched in fascinated horror as she swiftly pricked the index finger of her left hand. Blood welled into the tiny cut as she first pushed the coverings aside, then held her bloody finger over sheets that were soon red with smears of blood. "Señorita!"
"Shhhh! The servants will hear you!" She let several more drops fall to the snowy white sheet. "The blood of a virgin," she explained succinctly. "Hope you don't mind a little subterfuge on my part."
The blood of a virgin, Diego repeated to himself, understanding her actions now, and wondering how he could have been so slow. She was taking care of the expected blood of her first time during the intimacy between a man and a woman. "You've thought of everything," he noted in admiration.
The rueful look she threw his way spoke volumes. "I didn't reach such an old age as 26 by being foolish. I had better think of everything, because I know from experience that my father will think of it if I don't, and he has spies everywhere."
Diego balked. "Not here! Father would never allow it."
Her expression was now one of regret. "Yes, here. I'm sorry to have done this to you, but... Have you hired anyone new recently, or..?"
"Yes," he said, interrupting her. "Now that I think of it, there is that new female servant from town who..."
"Let me guess... she's the new laundress."
"Yes."
"Here to check up on the stains on the sheet," Lolita nonchalantly stated. "I won't have you or your father become the focus of a man like my father. He has a quick eye, and is always ready to air out people's private problems in public if he gets the chance. He's tricked me more times than I can count, so I don't feel bad about tricking him a time or two."
Diego stared at Lolita as she gave one last swipe to the sheets, spreading her blood around like this was a natural thing. "What I don't understand is..." Diego blushed. "Well, you have to admit that most women don't know of such things." And he indicated the bloody sheet with a wave of his hand.
Her expression was rueful again. "Most women don't grow up a Melendez."
Z Z Z
Marriage for Don Diego wasn't much of a hardship, an inconvenience, or even a change. Lolita took care of herself, and Diego often found her taking care of him as well, usually about things that he didn't know he had to think about until it would have been too late if it had been left up to him. Fortunately, she thought of them before they happened, often halting something decidedly unpleasant before it got started. She was very good at predicting when she needed to thwart the efforts of Don Eduardo to push his new in-laws into an unfavorable public light before he even made those efforts. And he was very glad of that, as it constantly saved Don Alejandro the trouble of having to deal with a man he was ill prepared to deal with.
As the months passed, the baby grew, and soon they could no longer keep it a secret that Lolita was expecting. Don Alejandro was, predictably, thrilled.
"It will be wonderful to hear the laughter of children again in this hacienda full of adults - I can't wait to see my first grandchild!" He was so excited that he didn't even notice that except for his wedding night, his son and daughter-in-law didn't share a bedroom. A baby so soon after such a sudden wedding was unlikely, but that didn't stop Alejandro from talking about each and every kick and hiccup that his grandchild did to anyone who would listen, most notably Mendoza at the tavern in Los Angeles.
Though unexpectedly excited about the prospect of the coming baby, Diego stayed far away from the tavern that had once been Victoria's main haunt. He couldn't stand the seeming emptiness of the place as the public gathered there to eat and drink and talk. The person he most wanted to talk with was noticeably absent. Even when the Mexican government was going through yet another of its many upheavals, he couldn't get interested enough in the civic affairs of the pueblo to voice his opinion on local politics, to say nothing of riding as Zorro, who now hadn't been seen or heard of in years. He encouraged his father to go to town to talk with his many friends, but had no interest in joining him. It was simply too painful to expect to see Victoria standing outside her tavern, snapping the dust from her rugs, or serving her tavern's many patrons, only to see a stranger in her place. It reminded him once again that she was gone, and most likely wasn't coming back, especially after all this time. His expectations kept him at home, where he wasn't constantly reminded of the huge hole in his life that was her disappearance.
But even he didn't have much time to dwell on that hole Victoria had left. Before Diego knew it, Lolita's time to have the baby was upon them. Felipe had just returned the day before from an aborted attempt to attend the University of Madrid, as Diego had done, and his attention was half on the son who had just returned, and half on the child he was going to have as long as things went to plan in the guest room at the end of the hall.
When it was all over, the midwife emerged from the room to show off the writhing, red newborn son of Lolita and Jorge that everyone thought had been premature and belonged to Diego. He took the baby from the inexperienced new midwife he'd hired to help with the delivery, someone who (more importantly) would not recognize this supposedly premature baby for the full term baby it really was. He smiled down at his new son, far more excited than he expected to be.
As excited as Diego was, Lolita was the opposite. She barely acknowledged the baby, holding it only to feed it. Diego couldn't understand her attitude towards hers and Jorge's creation, but still her odd behavior persisted into the child's second week of life. 'Give her time' everyone said. This problem of Lolita's was more common than not, and time always cured the ho-hum of depression that was known to be caused by exhaustion after birth.
Then during the night when the baby was ten days old, Lolita disappeared. When her absence was discovered the next morning, Diego and every one of his hands searched high and low for her, but they couldn't find her. Lolita's disappearance was as perplexing as Victoria's had been. Women didn't just vanish into thin air.
Then, with the suddenness of a California heat wave, they found her. She was lying on the ground, her hands tied behind her back with her robe belt, her nightgown and open robe blowing in the gentle wind, a pile of boulders beside her, a knife plunged up to the hilt into her heart, and the blood pooling wickedly under her very dead body.
It had been pirates, people said. Or it had been common outlaws who had stolen her away, and she'd died before they could demand a ransom for her from her wealthy new husband. Whatever the cause, there were only two things anyone really knew for sure: after just eight months of marriage, Diego was a widower, and his baby son had lost its mother.
However, the slight curve to Lolita's lips told Diego a different story. As everyone speculated about how many pirates/outlaws/bandits had killed his wife, Diego left them all to stealthily follow the trail of a single and very feminine set of footprints that led straight from the hacienda to the pile of boulders, where a perfect cleft in the rocks could have held a knife wedged into it, hilt first. He found that the odd footprints faced the rocks rather than away from them, as he expected them to if she had been threatened, backed up against the rocks, and then murdered as she begged for her life, as everyone else was suggesting.
It didn't make any sense at all. The tail of the robe's belt that tied her hands had flapped in the wind, so long it was as if she'd secured her own hands into a tie already formed, then tightened the robe belt using her mouth. Then she'd purposely fallen onto the knife previously wedged into the rock cleft, and had instantly fallen to the ground to bleed to death. It was if she'd... killed herself. The thought of suicide made Diego swallow the bile in his mouth. He'd never contemplated suicide, not even when his despair over his lost Victoria had been at its worst. He couldn't imagine that anyone else would contemplate it, either.
But clearly Lolita had. Why would a new mother want to kill herself like that? No, it didn't make any sense at all.
It wasn't until later he found the note she had placed under his pillow on his bed.
Diego, I ask that you call him Manuel. He is your son; keep him safe. Gracias for everything you have done for me... for us. I can never repay you. I hope you find your Victoria. Lolita
This wasn't a ransom note, it was a suicide note. It certainly looked as if she had planned her death all along. However, it did explain why she'd been so reluctant to form any kind of ties to her baby.
Diego carefully kept what he'd discovered to himself. Contrarily, everybody else openly gossiped about Lolita's grisly death-by-pirates-or-outlaws-or-bandits and its horrifying consequences: it was a great sadness that Diego's new wife should be taken from him so soon after his clearly happy union. He let the people believe what they wanted on the subject of his union. The more bereft his fellow Los Angelenos thought he was, the easier it would be for him to follow Lolita's last written request.
Still, Diego couldn't help but be left wondering - how much had Lolita truly planned, for how long had she planned it, and how much had been left up to chance? When Manuel was two weeks and one day old, he thought to travel to Santa Barbara to check the military records of those stationed there, and discovered that one Jorge Hidalgo had died during an Indian raid in late July of 1828. It was suspiciously close to his wedding date of August 1, 1828. But Lolita hadn't given any indication that Jorge was already dead when she had married Diego. It did, however, explain how she had been so willing to marry a man other than Jorge. She had said at the time that it had been to keep all three of them safe, but Diego no longer believed that. Suspicious now, he realized that she hadn't needed to be kept safe, and neither had Jorge, who was already dead. It had been the baby who needed to be kept safe all along.
It was looking more and more like Lolita really had planned the entire thing, living only long enough to have her baby, then to willingly disappear from Diego's life as quickly as she had appeared.
Diego's secret relief at the ending of his marriage was prodigious, as was his subsequent guilt. He was free again practically as soon as he had agreed to the chains of matrimony. His guilt was much longer lived than his marriage had ever been.