Sitting at the desk, working on a model airplane, was a boy who looked to be about thirteen. He grinned at his mother, then, seeing that she wasn’t alone, stood up. “Are you the cleaning lady?” he asked.
María nodded, her old eyes studying him. His eyes were dark, and his hair, nearly black, was thick and curly. “Cómo se llama?” she asked.
“Roberto,” the boy replied. “But everybody calls me Bobby.”
“Roberto,” María repeated, her heart once again beating faster. “It is a good name.”
“And he’s fascinated with history,” Donna Ruiz said. She turned to her son. “María seems to know all about the house and the town. I’ll bet if you asked her, she could tell you everything that’s ever happened here.”
Bobby Ruiz turned eager eyes toward María. “Could you?” he asked. “Do you really know all about the town?”
María hesitated only an instant, then nodded. “Sí,” she said softly. “I know all the old legends, and I will tell them all to you.” She smiled gently. “I will tell them to you, and you will understand them. All of them. And someday, you will live in the hacienda. Would you like that?”
The boy’s eyes burned brightly. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”
“Then I will take you there,” María replied. “I will take you there, and someday it will be yours.”
A moment later, María was gone, and Bobby Ruiz was alone in his room. He went to his bed and lay down on his back so that he could gaze at the ceiling, but he saw nothing. Instead, he listened to the sounds in his head, the whisperings in Spanish that he had been hearing since the first time he came into this room. But now, after talking to María Torres, he understood the whisperings.
Soon, he knew, the killings would begin again.…