That is when you received the miracle,” Joaquin said. He was using his Diablo Diablo manner with great effort, because he, like everyone else listening, was quite affected by Marisita’s tale. He and Pete and Beatriz gazed at the closed doors of the box truck, imagining Marisita standing on the stage outside it.
“Yes,” Marisita confirmed. She was crying again now, but she spoke through the tears. One cannot always hear tears on the radio, but they were audible in this instance. Not the ones that fell, because those were still drowned out by the rain always falling on her, but the ones that choked in her throat.
Joaquin wished that Marisita’s family could have heard her tell her version of the story, just as Robbie and Betsy had heard each other’s letters the night before. But they were hundreds of miles away, so he simply continued. “And it was sometime after this Daniel helped you?”
Marisita whispered, “I knew he was risking himself.”
She felt sure that the Sorias would despise her in the next few minutes, if they didn’t already hate her after hearing how she’d betrayed her own family. But she pressed on. “We knew we weren’t allowed to speak. But sometimes … he would come to my kitchen and just sit while I cooked. I didn’t cook for him—I knew that wasn’t allowed. But sometimes, after he left, I would realize that there were a few biscochitos or churros missing, and then I just started to make them for him and leave them where he could steal as many as he liked. And—I knew we were not supposed to speak, but sometimes I would go to the Shrine and pray in the garden with him. He was not supposed to give me anything, but sometimes he would leave little things there for me to pick up. Just thread for my sewing, or a little harmonica, or a bird’s nest that he had found. We didn’t speak. We knew we weren’t supposed to speak. We knew we weren’t supposed to be together at all. But finally … we began to walk into the desert together. We didn’t speak. We knew we shouldn’t. We knew … we shouldn’t.”
“That crazy fool!” Joaquin said.
“That crazy fool,” Marisita agreed. “And we broke that rule, too, eventually. We spoke. Just a few words here and there, more every time that nothing terrible happened when we did. I know we were fools. I know how it sounds. I’m so sorry.”
This apology meant nothing to Diablo Diablo and everything to Joaquin and the rest of the Sorias—but not for the reason Marisita thought. Contrary to what Marisita feared, none of them were angry with her, and none of them hated her. They did not need this apology to make her actions right. But it still meant something to them that she cared enough about them to offer it.
Generously, Joaquin said, “It was him as well as you, Marisita. Always take blame for your own actions but never take blame for someone else’s. Was this when his darkness fell?”
“No,” Marisita said.
“Well, I don’t understand why not.”
“Because he hadn’t helped me yet,” Marisita said. “He hadn’t interfered. I wasn’t any closer to the second miracle just because I fell in love with him. In fact, I only felt worse. Daniel is so good, and he loved his family so much, it only made me think about how I hadn’t heard from my own family—how could I have? I assume they have been thrown in the streets. They—they must hate me. I’ve put them through so much humiliation. I failed them. I didn’t even save myself, and so all I have is this guilt.”
“But this is an outrage,” Joaquin said. Beatriz and Pete furiously wrote messages to Joaquin and held them up for him to read them. “What about this brother of yours—Max! He should be carrying the guilt! Yes, all of us in the studio agree that he’s the villain.”
“He was just so angry,” Marisita said.
“So am I!” Joaquin said. “At Max!”
“If you’d met him—”
“I’d be angrier! Tell us what happened that night, the night Daniel came to you.”
On that night, Marisita had decided to walk into the desert until she could no longer walk. She had been contemplating it for weeks, and it was not an easy decision to make. It was the ultimate in failure. The ultimate imperfection. But it was made—or it had been, until Tony and Pete arrived, interrupting her. Now she could not go until the dogs had settled and Bicho Raro had fallen back to sleep. Even this small delay destroyed her, and she curled on the floor of her home and sobbed. Deep down, she knew that walking out into the desert still did nothing for her family; it was merely another selfish act. In the end, she still thought only of herself. If she wanted to truly cure her family’s woes, she would return to them and beg for Homer’s forgiveness. Even in this moment of despair, she could not make herself do that. Self-hatred and rain poured around her. She had not been dry or warm in months.
Slowly, the commotion outside died down. The dogs’ barking vanished into the night. Engines were silenced. Voices rose and fell. Owls screamed and called and finally fell silent.
The night was quiet.
A knock came on Marisita’s door. She did not get off the floor, nor did she answer. A moment later, the door cracked open and footsteps came to her. They stopped beside her, and the owner of the feet stood there for a very long time. This was because it was Daniel, and he was still wrestling with himself over what he wanted to do and what he was supposed to do.
With a heavy sigh, he curled himself around her.
This was not allowed, to embrace her like this, but he did it anyway. The rain fell on her, and the rain fell on him, and they were both soaked to the skin. In this moment the scent of rain mingled sweetly with the scent of the Shrine’s incense, and Marisita remembered what it was to be warm and safe.
Then Daniel did what he would do for her if she had not been a pilgrim, as if he was not afraid. Still holding her tightly, he spoke into her ear. He told her that she could not hold herself responsible for all of her family’s financial woes, and that it was not her place to be the sacrificial lamb. There were other solutions, but her family had settled on the easiest and ignored the signs of her unhappiness. Moreover, she was honorable for not giving herself to a man who she couldn’t love; Homer didn’t deserve to live a lie.
“But they didn’t make me,” Marisita had told Daniel. “They were not cruel. I was at fault for not going through with it, or not telling them sooner that I couldn’t.”
“You can forgive yourself,” Daniel had insisted.
“I don’t think I can,” she’d replied.
He continued to hold her. “I know everything feels wrong, but you can be right again, Marisita, if you try as hard at it as you try with everything else.”
This was when the black rose of his darkness had bloomed. Neither Daniel nor Marisita knew what part of that visit triggered it, but the truth was that it was not Daniel coming to comfort her, nor the sensible council he gave. It was not his arms around her or the warmth of his words in her ear. It was, in fact, the way that he said Marisita to her in this last sentence. The way he said her name conveyed all of his sympathy, and it confirmed all of the truth of his advice, and it promised her that she was worthwhile and redeemable, and it indicated that he treasured the way he had seen her selflessly interact with the other pilgrims, and it hinted that if any single thing was different about their circumstances, he would marry her immediately and live with her for decades until they died on the same day just as in love as they were in that moment. This may seem like a lot to be contained in the single word that is a given name, but this is why in more conservative times, cultures took great care to refer to each other by Mr. and Mrs.
“And then he left,” Marisita said.
Joaquin was too overcome by his cousin’s bravery to immediately answer. Right then, he was so ferociously proud and scared for Daniel that love and hope and fear choked his Diablo Diablo voice from him. With great effort, he managed to say only, “We’re going to take a brief musical break. Here’s Elvis with ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love.’ ”
While Elvis crooned, Joaquin held himself and wiped away a tear, and Pete and Beatriz looked steadily at each other because stories about lovers always hit other lovers hard.
Joaquin pulled himself together as the song drew to a close. “Now we’re back. Thank you, Elvis, for singing the words we were all thinking. And the darkness?”
“I don’t know when it came upon him. It must have been soon after he left, because he returned only a few minutes later with the letter for Beatriz. He slid it under the door and gave me the instructions for the letter. Then he was gone, and I never got to tell him myself that I love him.”
There was silence.
Joaquin said, “If he is listening tonight, you just did.”
Marisita said nothing.
Joaquin said, “Marisita?”
“It’s just—” Marisita started.
“Yes?”
Marisita held out her hands to the sky and examined them again. “It’s just that the rain has stopped.”