DISCLAIMER: If you recognize it, I don't own it.

So this was what it felt like to have your blood run cold. "What?" Dora Luz asked, the color draining from her face.

"I haven't seen her since last night," Manolo answered.

"Did you check the library?"

"First place I looked."

"And the conservatory?"

"I've looked all over the house, senora."

"She didn't leave a note?"

"Just her necklace." He held it up for her to see. The black ribbon was broken, as though it had been ripped from its owner's throat.

"She came to the stables before sunup." A passing servant had overheard them and poked her head through the doorway. "Rode off towards the orchard. Didn't say when she'd be back."

Dora Luz leapt from her seat. "I want two horses prepared at once," she said, then turned to Manolo. "You're coming with me."

It was going to rain, that much was certain. Gray clouds covered the sky, and a cool wind swept across the dark green hills. She always catches a cold in this sort of weather, Dora Luz thought, shivering.

"Is that the orchard?" Manolo asked as they ascended a hill overlooking a glade of trees. The horseshoe tracks they'd been following for the past twenty minutes sloped down towards it, growing more erratic as they went.

"Yes."

Spurring his horse onwards, Manolo took off down the hill. "Maria?" he called. "Come back to the house! Your mother's getting worried."

Dora Luz trailed after him and fell further behind as they rode through the trees. It's not safe for her to be out here alone. Losing oneself in the thick foliage was all too easy, and the servants regularly spoke of coming across snakes while working. She was only trying to get away from you.

A loud, sharp shriek pulled her out of her thoughts. "Maria!" Practically jumping off his horse, Manolo was running towards a figure lying still in the grass.

The young woman's hair was full of knots and brambles, her skin covered in cuts from branches and thorns. On the side of her head was a bloody gash, and her right leg was unnaturally twisted to a degree that was painful even to look at. Her eyes were barely open, and each shallow breath she took made her wince.

She looked up at Manolo as he gathered the upper half of her body into his arms, trembling. "Guess I should've looked where I was going…"

"I-It's okay," Manolo choked out, brushing the hair from her face. "Everything's going to be okay…"

"Mija, what happened?" Dora Luz asked, daring to approach.

Maria simply scowled at her before closing her eyes.

Manolo's face grew pale. "What do we do now?"

"We get her back to the house," Dora Luz answered, casting a glance up at the gathering storm clouds. "Now."

The horse had tripped on a rock and thrown her - it was found later wandering around the orchard, perfectly unharmed. The unconscious girl was carried back to the house with a makeshift stretcher: Manolo and Dora Luz had been lucky to find her when they did, the doctor said as he tended to her injuries. As it stood now, it wasn't going to kill her - perhaps. There would be no going about for her, though, not until the leg began to heal. So she was put to bed with a bandage around her head and a cast on her leg, and her family was told to call for the doctor again should she take a turn for the worse.

Dora Luz hesitated before knocking at the bedroom door. "Come in," she heard Manolo say. No going back now.

Maria still lay asleep, her head slumped to one side. In a chair by the bedside sat Manolo, who was trying to pay attention to a book in his lap. Finally he put it aside, adjusted the bedsheets and walked to the window. He watched the raindrops sliding down the glass for a few seconds, then walked back to the bed and adjusted the sheets again.

"She'd laugh if she saw how much you were fussing over her," Dora Luz told him.

"I wish she would, then." He sat down again, not taking his eyes off her. "I don't know what else to do…"

"You've done all you can. She'll be fine."

He didn't look at his mother-in-law. "I can't lose her," he said softly as he took Maria's hand. "Not again." He took a deep breath, as though trying to hold back tears. "Why did she go out there, anyway?"

"Me."

He looked up. "What?"

Dora Luz had sunk into a chair on the other side of the bed. "Last night she asked me why I never wrote or visited. If I'd ever wanted her. And…and I said perhaps I didn't."

Manolo didn't answer for a full minute. When Dora Luz finally looked up at him, his eyes were wide as he stared at her. "Did you…mean it?" he asked.

"No."

"Then why did you say it?"

"Why we all say things we don't mean to people we love." She was silent for a moment, stroking Maria's hair. "I suppose you've heard quite a bit about me."

"A few things."

"Shall I tell you my side of them?"

"Sounds interesting."

She smiled sadly as she leaned back in her chair. "When I was her age," she said, "I had all sorts of plans. I was going to see every country in the world, all the great ruins and tombs and towers, everything you could imagine. Really make something of myself. And then one day, my parents sat me down and told me we were going to Mexico for my own wedding."

Manolo winced.

"It was all arranged, of course. I never loved him. I didn't even meet him until a few weeks beforehand. I was trapped before I could really realize it. I didn't until…"

"Until Maria came along?"

Her face seemed to fall even further. "When Jeronimo heard we'd had a girl, he didn't even come to see. He just left us alone and went back to work as though there wasn't a child at all. I looked down at her and I thought, 'So this is it. This is the hand you've been dealt.' I didn't think that…" She paused and looked down at Maria. "That something good could come out of where I was. I was young and foolish, and all I wanted after that was my freedom. I didn't give any thought as to what it would cost me."

"What happened after you left?"

"Mother had passed not long after the wedding, and people say Father dropped dead when he heard what I'd done. That's how I got the estate."

"And then you traveled?"

"I tried to forget. I thought I could put it all behind me and move on, and that would be that. It worked for eight years. I suppose you know what happened after that."

Manolo nodded. "You took her to Spain."

"That was the first time I'd seen her since leaving. Such a precious thing!" She smiled and laughed a bit at the memory. "I was so amazed I could hardly say a word."

"So why didn't you keep seeing her after that?"

Her smile faded. "I thought I'd lost my chance. That she wouldn't understand why I left and wouldn't want me back. Besides, she needed a real mother. Not someone like me. So I kept my distance because I thought it would be best. 'Maybe someday you can come back,' I thought. 'Maybe when she's older, she'll understand.'"

Manolo reached across the bed and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I think she would," he said. "If you talked to her."

Dora Luz looked down at the figure between them. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, or perhaps Maria's skin was growing paler. "I hope I'll be able to."