Chapter 32 Ignacio
Ignacio
After he sent word to the Defiant via coded telegram, telling them he’d discovered communication between his father and the ringmaster, Ignacio found himself bone-tired.
Far too much had happened in one day. He’d performed in the Big Top, snuck into the ringmaster’s wagon, and kissed the only girl he’d ever loved. He deserved a break.
But when he stepped into his boxcar, he heard a familiar voice whispering.
“Dovie?” he called out.
Esmeralda whirled around, tears in her eyes. She held a letter in her hand. Not just any letter. The letter she had left for him the night they were supposed to run away together.
She shook the parchment angrily. “What in the devil is this?”
Ignacio blinked with confusion. “What do you mean?”
She shook it harder. “Who wrote this?”
Hurt stirred to life inside him. “Are you mocking me?”
“Do I look like I am?!”
She didn’t. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever seen Esmeralda so baffled before. But her confusion made no sense. She had been the one to write every dreadful sentence.
“Look good and hard at the letter, Dovie. That is your handwriting. Those are your words. Or maybe you truly did forget. Maybe I was another fool you swindled. Maybe you never cared a lick about me.”
She sucked in a tormented breath.
But why should she feel tortured when she had left him?
“Where did you get this?” she asked, scowling down at the page.
“In the hollow of the dove tree where you left it.”
The day after he turned eighteen, he had woken up feeling happier than he’d ever felt before.
He and Dovie had spent the early hours of the morning together, kissing and exploring their bodies, and talking about their future.
He’d given her his mother’s ring as a promise.
As a token of the love that he had for her that felt as vast as the universes above.
But when he strolled past Father’s office around sunrise, his father had beckoned him in.
Father held out a silver envelope.
At first, Ignacio thought it was a birthday gift, but the moment he saw the Blackbird seal, he knew what lay inside.
“I’ve been enlisted? But Blackbirds don’t begin training camp until they’re nineteen,” he said.
“Those vipers in Dos Palos are getting stronger by the minute. We need more soldiers. And you need to pay your dues so you can take my place one day.”
That wasn’t what he wanted. Not anymore. He wanted a life with Esmeralda. “But…”
“But nothing.” Father grabbed his suitcase and brushed past Ignacio. “I’ll be back in an hour and then we will talk more about your training. Say your goodbyes, but don’t even think about doing anything absurd or there will be hell to pay. You will not tarnish my name or your mother’s legacy.”
The second Father left, Ignacio found Dovie scrubbing boots in the courtyard.
She saw him approaching and scanned the empty area as if them being caught together was the biggest problem they faced.
He showed her the enlistment card and watched as understanding seeped into her marrow. Her hands began to shake.
“You cannot go,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to.”
Relief softened her features, and he hated that he had to harden them again.
“But I have no choice,” he said. “I must obey my father.”
“Your father is a terrible man!” Her eyes shot around the courtyard again.
She stepped nearer to him. “The comandante…He has done…” She shook her head.
“He is doing terrible things. They are making these canisters filled with gas. When set off, they singe the skin and collapse the lungs. They’re sending those into the front lines. There’s more…worse things…like—”
Ignacio cut her off, thinking of his father’s parting words: Don’t even think about doing anything absurd or there will be hell to pay.
“I have no choice in the matter. I cannot disobey him. I can’t disappoint him.
” He took her hand, rubbed his thumb over the ring he gave her. “Will you wait for me?”
“You don’t understand how terrible this war is.
Every missive I’ve been able to decode while carrying messages to and from his generals has painted a picture far different from anything we’ve been told in the papers.
The people of Dos Palos aren’t some wicked force hell-bent on destroying our kingdom.
It’s us, Pigeon. We are the bad guys here. And your father is leading the charge.”
“Nonsense. You know my father. He’s calculated. He wouldn’t send us into battle for no good reason.”
“Is there ever a good reason when it comes to war? To send thousands to their deaths?” She stepped closer to him. “You cannot go.”
His brows furrowed. “I’ve been preparing for this since as far back as I can remember. My mother was a soldier, my father. I can be one too.”
“You don’t have to be.” She grabbed his sleeves. “Run away with me. We could go south. Or take a ship east. I can’t lose you.”
He cupped her cheeks. “You won’t. Not ever.”
“You can’t promise that. You’ll change. You’ll forget me.”
“I’d never.”
She started to cry. “You’ll become him. I just know it. He doesn’t see people like me as human. He sees us as pieces to move on a board.”
“I would never do that.”
“But you will do whatever he commands. If he tells you to kill, you will. And I can’t stand by and watch you or your soul die. I won’t stay here if you go. I refuse to sit back and wait for a corpse to return to me.”
“So, you’ll leave? You’ll move on without me?”
She clutched him harder. “Come with me. Choose me. Choose us. Not some war that should never have been started.”
“I can’t turn my back on my father or my mother’s legacy.”
Her face paled. “Yet you can turn your back on me.”
“No. That isn’t true. I love you. I will always love you.”
“Why do I feel like there is a but coming?”
“Because there is. Dovie, I am an Olivera. I must—”
She held up a hand to silence him. “I’ll give you until midnight to decide. I’ll meet you by the dove tree. Check your father’s hidden office. See if you can’t find the proof yourself. If I don’t see you, I’ll know you’ve made your choice.”
He did make his choice. He would always choose her.
Just before midnight, he went to retrieve his savings from the box hidden beneath his floorboards.
His heart plummeted. There was nothing inside but his mother’s ring.
He raced out of his room and ran to the dove tree.
But she wasn’t there. Only that letter was.
He’d been broken over it for a year and here she was, acting as if she didn’t even remember it.
She shook her head slowly. “I never wrote this.”
“You can’t lie your way out of this. And why would you even try? You don’t care.”
“I care!” she screamed. She clamped her free hand over her mouth as if her own words had startled her.
“You care about what?” he said, edging closer to her.
She stepped back, panicked.
Maybe he had been too easy on her before.
Maybe he’d babied her too much. But he’d coddled her because he was so afraid she’d close herself off to him forever.
Well, they were far past that. He’d already lost her.
And he’d lived what felt like a lifetime with that pain.
He had learned something in their year apart; it was better to learn the truth than suffer in the unknown.
Now, he’d push. He’d get the answers he needed from her.
She wasn’t some broken bird anymore. If anything, she’d broken him.
He crossed his arms. “Neither one of us is leaving this space until we let it all out, and I’ll be damned if I let one more distraction get between us. Tell me. Now. What do you care about?”
“You! You fool! I care about you!”
“Bullshit,” he spat. “I’m not one of your customers willing to accept your lies. Tell me the truth.”
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep after you left? I thought the universe must truly hate me to give me you and then take you away.”
His arms went slack at his sides. “I never left you. And I would never have stopped searching for you if not for the letter you wrote—”
“I didn’t write this!” She waved the letter in the air. “I would never because I love you.”
Her words pummeled into his chest.
Love. She had said I love you. Not I loved you. Not I used to love you. She said I love you.
Something hot burned at the base of his throat. If he spoke, she’d hear the tears building there.
He didn’t care.
“Then why did you leave without me?” His voice cracked. Tears slipped down his cheeks. “I was ready to run away with you. I would have followed you straight into hell if you asked.”
Esmeralda looked startled. “But you did leave me. Your father said…” Her eyes went wide as if realization had dawned on her.
His heart sank. “My father said what?”