We’d passed through the main part of the gardens and were almost at the cliff that gave onto the beach. It was still early afternoon, and the sun cast stark shadows. The wind was warm, a caress, and tropical blossoms grew in abundance all around me, creating a scent of such poignancy that I wondered if Carlita had been happy in this house.
“Where is Vincent Day?” I asked.
Federico shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been years since we spoke.”
“Do you think he might be behind this scheme to ruin your film?”
Federico slowed and then stopped. He put his hand up to shade the sun from his eyes as he glanced out at the surf pounding below us on the beach. “Why would he do this now? So much time has passed. We’ve both accepted Carlita’s death.”
“Did he know she was starving herself to death?”
He looked to the left and I couldn’t see his expression. “I never told him. Even as Carlita was dying, I wanted her to be mine.” He made a sound of disgust. “That sounds so pathetic, but you had to know her. She was fire and ice. She was so magnificent-”
“That you had to sleep around on her.” I said it quietly, and that only heightened the impact of my words. Federico looked as if I’d slapped him.
“It doesn’t make sense, I know.”
Even though I waited, he didn’t attempt to explain it further. So I pressed. “If you were so in love with your wife, why did you sleep around on her?”
He sighed and reached out to pick a perfect rose from a vine growing along the fence at the back of the garden. He held the blossom, turning it slowly in his fingers. “Can you begin to imagine what it was like for me when I finally realized that Carlita would never be mine? Not truly mine.”
“She loved Vincent Day that much?” Somehow, I’d gotten the impression that Vincent was someone Carlita used.
“Not Vincent.” He laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “If it had been Vincent, perhaps I could have understood.”
“Then who?”
“Carlita loved her father. He was the only man that mattered to her.”
“Are you saying-”
He looked appalled. “No. Not that. Certainly not. There was no sexual bond between them.” A flush stained his cheeks. “Or perhaps there was, and I was too blind to see it.”
“What do you mean?” Federico’s emotions were like an angry abscess, and I was the one jabbing around with a needle. It wasn’t going to be pretty if he ever really let go.
“Carlita was a virgin when I married her. In fact, she was unbelievably innocent. I knew she was pure, but I found myself in the position of teaching her everything. How to kiss, how to accept a touch of affection. It was as if she’d been… walled away from most human emotion that had even a hint of sexuality in it.”
“This was the eighties, Federico. Sex was all over television and the movies and-”
“You’ve just made my point,” he interrupted me. He sniffed the rose and then held it out to me. I took it, careful of the thorns. “Carlita’s innocence was unnatural. I believe Estoban honestly felt that all sexual feelings were dirty, so he raised Carlita to deny all such urges.”
“Holy cow. That’s a sick and twisted thing to do to a young woman.”
“Indeed.” He waved a hand around him. “He built her this temple to virginity, and then he had to spy on us so that he could manipulate her. I didn’t know about the secret passageways, the listening spaces, the panels where he could watch a peep show.” Anger crept into his voice and I saw his features harden. Here was the hatred I’d expected.
“I was gentle with Carlita. And patient.” His dry and hollow laugh came again. “Imagine such a fool. I was proud that I was the only man my wife had ever known. That I was the one to teach her to please me. And that bastard Estoban watched, so that he could punish her for each thing she did that gave her pleasure.”
I leaned against the fence, slightly queasy. “I’m so sorry.”
“I was a coward,” he said. “Instead of confronting Estoban about the way Carlita took such pleasure in some intimacy and then later lashed out at me for teaching it to her, I buried myself in work.”
“Federico, you didn’t know. How could you know what Estoban was doing?”
He moved so quickly that I almost yelped when he lashed at the roses with his hands. He swung at the beautiful blooms, sending a shower of petals on the winds that blew them out toward the ocean and the beach. The sweet scent, old-fashioned and heartbreaking, filled the area where we stood.
He didn’t stop until the last rose was demolished and he was panting from exertion. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and gripped the railing of the fence. “She hurt my ego. She said things that-that I was a bad lover, that I would never satisfy her, that I was dirty. She drove me insane, Sarah Booth. And I paid her back by sleeping with the woman I knew would hurt her the most, a tall blonde.”
I understood, and the truth of it was unbearably sad. “It was Carlita’s father who made her self-conscious about her looks, because she was so sexually charged. She was the Latin Marilyn Monroe.” I repeated what Millie had told me.
“When the film world saw her, she got offers from every director working. She was so exotic, so sensual, and she could act. She could also sing and dance, but that wasn’t important in that first rush of offers. I told Carlita that her true talent would be acknowledged, but that her feminine power was what everyone saw first.”
“So the roles she was offered fed into the misgivings her father had set up in her. She was typecast as the seductress, the role her father had taught her would send her straight to Hell.”
He nodded once and then turned away. His hand went to his face and I wondered if he was wiping away a tear. “I utterly failed her, you know. Instead of helping her, I cut her to the bone.”
“Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, Federico. Neither of us can say whether you could have changed anything had you behaved differently. Estoban set those behaviors and beliefs from infancy.”
“And that’s why I sent the children away from her. Not to be mean, not to punish her, but to protect them. I thought if I could keep them from seeing the way she behaved, the things she did to herself, they wouldn’t learn them.” His tone had turned bitter. “Estelle certainly proved me wrong. It’s genetic. It comes in the blood.”
I put a hand on his arm and felt the tension in his muscles. “Estelle can choose to change.”
“You say that as if it were so simple.” The anger was gone and he was left with sadness again.
“Change is the hardest thing, for human or animals. Even plants have difficulty, and many can’t survive it.” I felt the corners of my mouth tug upward, but it was merely the ghost of a smile. “But the most amazing thing is that we keep trying. As long as we’re alive, we continue to try. So we have to find Estelle and make sure she has all the help we can give her, if she chooses to try.”
He put his arm around my shoulders and moved back the way we’d come. “You’re a wise woman, Sarah Booth.”
I laughed, and this time it was full and real. “Not me. I happen to have some very smart friends.”
He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “But you listen to them, and that’s what makes you wise. Now let’s head back to the house and find Jovan. I’m sure she’s wondering where I am. I can’t leave all the packing to her.”
But as we rounded the hedge in the garden, I realized Jovan wasn’t worried about packing. She stood on the balcony of my room and stared down at us. Her expression was blank, but when she noticed my gaze on her, she turned and went inside. She’d witnessed Federico putting his arm around me and whispering in my ear. She couldn’t know that he was talking about something innocent. From her vantage point, I doubted that the gesture looked anything except guilty as sin.