Saints Astray (Santa Olivia #2)

Saints Astray (Santa Olivia #2) Page 71

“Maybe we didn’t know her as well as we thought,” Mack murmured.

“No, I guess it’s pretty true,” Pilar admitted. “But people do change, you know. Anyway, we went back to Huatulco to spend time with Loup’s family…”

She continued the story—touring with Kate through Australia and Japan, the stage rushing, the rising Mystery Girl phenomenon. The hearings, the disappearance and abduction of Miguel Garza and the decision to rescue him.

“That’s why you came back, Loup?” Jaime asked. “To rescue Miguel fucking Garza?”

“Pretty much,” she agreed. “Then other stuff happened.”

“Jesus! He’s a cretinous thug who ran roughshod over this town for years!”

“He’s really not that bad once you get to know him,” Pilar offered. “I mean, he’s crude and he’s a bully, but he’s sort of decent underneath it all. Smarter than you’d think, too. Well, except for getting himself in trouble in Vegas. That was dumb.”

“I take it you succeeded in rescuing him?” Father Ramon interjected. “We’ve seen footage of his testimony, but there was nothing about an abduction.”

“Oh, yeah!” She smiled and described the Vegas caper.

“Excuse me,” Anna inquired delicately. “Are you… are you having fun with us?”

Loup blinked, a forkful of rice and beans in hand. “No, of course not.”

“It’s just—”

“Look, I know it sounds pretty crazy, especially when you string it all together. But we’re not making any of this up, honest.” She ate her forkful of food. “Pilar, you haven’t even eaten. Go ahead and I’ll tell my part.”

“Okay.”

Loup finished her end of the story—the cross-country drive, her detention. The Outpost hearings and the happy result. “After that, I guess you know what happened. They overturned the Human Rights Amendment and I was released.”

“Yeah,” C.C. said in awe. “We saw it on the news. We saw you on the news. Real live news!”

Sister Martha dabbed her lips with a napkin. “Which is a true goddamn miracle.” She glanced around the table. “I’m not joking, children. As much as I’ve railed against God in my lifetime, I can recognize a goddamn fucking miracle when I see one.”

“Amen,” Maria whispered with heartfelt fervor, and blushed.

Father Ramon smiled. “Amen, indeed.”

FIFTY-FOUR

They spent the night in the church’s empty girls’ dormitory room. Pilar watched Loup push a pair of cots together, making them up with threadbare sheets Anna had given them.

“Jesus, this is weird,” she said. “Do you remember—?”

Loup sat on the improvised double bed. “That first night we were alone here?”

“Uh-huh.” Pilar straddled her lap.

“Mm-hmm.” She slid her arms around Pilar’s waist. “It was the first time we got to spend the whole night together.”

Pilar kissed her at length, exploring her mouth in a delicious, leisurely fashion. “We stayed up all night fooling around.”

“Until dawn,” Loup whispered. “That’s when you told me you loved me for the first time, and I told you I loved you too.”

“Want to relive history?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding?”

When the pale gray dawn broke through the narrow, arched windows, they were tired and languorous, replete with pleasure and happiness. Loup ran a lock of Pilar’s hair through her fingers, watching the early sunlight pick out the glinting blond streaks in its brown, silken fineness.

“I love you,” she said softly. “I wanted to say it first this time. I love you an awful, awful lot.”

Pilar sighed. “Oh, God! Me too.”

Later in the morning, they met with Father Ramon and Sister Martha to talk seriously about topics overlooked in the joy of the previous day’s reunion—the disposition of the gifts they’d brought, Santa Olivia’s most pressing needs, and their desire to set up a scholarship fund for the Santitos and other deserving Outposters.

It was the latter that engaged them the most.

“Are you quite serious?” Father Ramon asked, dumbstruck.

“Well, yeah,” Loup said. “Why?”

“It’s just…” He looked apologetic. “You never struck me as much of a scholar, Loup. Neither of you did.”

“No, I know.” She smiled sidelong at Pilar. “Although it turns out Pilar’s really good at research and all kinds of stuff.”

Pilar smiled happily. “Thanks, baby!”

“Well, you are. And people should be able to do what they’re good at, right?” Loup shrugged. “In Huatulco, I got to run outside for the first time in my life, as far and as fast as I wanted. It felt so good, like setting a part of me free. I used to think about it a lot in my jail cell. I think for someone like Jaime or Jane not being able to use their minds, not being able to study and learn, must be like a kind of prison.”

“And it might make Jane less crabby,” Pilar added. “Which would be a good thing, right?”

Sister Martha shook her head. “Children, you are a wonderment.”

They learned it would be a while before they could implement the plan. The Red Cross had set up a temporary medical clinic, relieving Sister Martha of some of her burden, but for now she was busy coordinating with the government to provide a census and establish birth records for everyone born in Outpost after the occupation in order to complete the paperwork that would render them American citizens.

“Guess they cut a few corners for us, huh?” Loup said.

“Sweetheart, I don’t think anyone’s going to begrudge you,” Sister Martha said wryly.

Father Ramon made his recommendations for the disposition of their gifts—the majority of the computers for the school, a few items for the church, phones for the Santitos, a big flat-screen television for the improvised theater of the legion hall—and agreed that a free raffle for the rest was a fine idea.

“Everyone gets a ticket,” he said in approval. “It will be the most democratic thing to happen here in decades.”

“Plus, it will drive Rosa Salamanca crazy to see stuff given away for free with no way for her to make a profit on it,” Pilar said with a certain glee. “The greedy old witch.”

He smiled. “It will at that. When—?”

“Santa Olivia’s Feast Day,” Sister Martha interrupted him. “When else? We’ll set up a table in the square where everyone can claim a ticket and use the census list to keep track.”

“Perfect.”

With two days yet to go before Santa Olivia’s Day, with the help of the Santitos, they made flyers announcing the free raffle and posted them around town, finding in the process that the town had changed. There were barely half as many soldiers around, and the boxing ring in the center of the town square was gone.

“Wow.” Loup stared. “When did that happen?”

“A while ago,” T.Y. said. “General Argyle was replaced about a month after you disappeared. As soon as the new guy took over, they tore down the ring.”

“No more fights?”

“Nah.” He shook his head. “Yours was the last.” He brightened. “Hey, you know what they are gonna have this year? Fireworks! The ban’s been repealed.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” T.Y. made a face. “Though I suppose that’s no big deal to you, huh? You and Pilar probably saw fireworks tons of times, traveling all over the world and everything.”

“Nope.” Loup smiled at him. “Not a one.”

“Only in the movies,” Pilar agreed. She nudged Loup with her hip. “Though I can think of something that’s a lot like fireworks.”

“Mm-hmm.”

T.Y. covered his ears. “I don’t need to hear this!”

They went past the gym where Loup had spent so many hours sparring in secret with Miguel Garza. The UNIQUE FITNESS sign had faded further and dusty blinds covered the windows, untouched for almost a year. Loup touched the windows lightly with her fingertips.

“Thinking about your coach?” Pilar asked sympathetically.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll look him up one day. Florida, right?”

“Yeah.” She gave her a grateful look. “Thanks, Pilar.”

It made them pensive. On the eve of Santa Olivia’s Day, they visited the extensive, rambling graveyard behind the church filled with largely unmarked graves. Even knowing what they were looking for, it was hard to find. Mack, who tended the grounds, consulted the charts and showed Pilar the plots where her parents were buried, and Loup the plot where her mother rested.

“We bought her a comb for her hair not long before she died,” she murmured, remembering. “Tommy and I. The first time he won money betting on a fight because I told him what would happen. I wanted her to have something pretty. She was buried wearing it.”

Mack touched her shoulder. “Want me to show you Tommy’s?”

“No.” Loup shook her head. “That one, I can find.”

A pair of cracked and faded boxing gloves still dangled from the makeshift cross. Loup sat cross-legged on the hard earth, remembering the big brother who’d always taken care of her and taught her to be careful. Tommy, with his sunny disposition and his ready smile; tall, strapping, blond Tommy, looking nothing like her, but her brother nonetheless. Tommy, who was meant to be Outpost’s hero.

“Hey, baby.”

“Hey.” She looked up at Pilar, seeing the marks of tears on her cheeks. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Pilar sank down beside her. “You?”

“Mostly.”

They sat side by side.

“He’d have been so goddamn proud of you he’d burst,” Pilar said after a while.