Moon Over Water

He nodded. “I guess that’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? Around here I stick out like rice in a bowl of beans.”

“I take it you speak Spanish?”

“Fluently.” Then, as if to prove his point, he spoke to the man behind the counter. The clerk grinned, nodded and said something in return. His eyes moved to Lorraine; she couldn’t miss the relief in his expression.

Lorraine didn’t understand what either of them had said. By this point she was beyond translating even the simplest verbs. Jason turned to her. “Now, what were you trying to ask?”

“I need a ticket to El Mirador.”

“You’re joking,” Jason said, his face lighting up. “I’m heading that way myself.”

“Really? I thought it was just a small town.”

“Actually, I’m going to a place not far from there. I was planning to spend the night in El Mirador.”

“You mean there’s a hotel?” If things didn’t work out with her father, it was reassuring to know she’d have someplace to sleep that night.

“I guess you could call it that,” Jason said, and they both laughed.

Lorraine paid for her ticket, and Jason bought his, as well. When they’d finished, they sat in the shade outside and waited for the bus, which was due to arrive, Jason said, in thirty minutes.

“Will you be staying at the hotel, too?” her newfound friend asked as he arranged his backpack at his feet.

“I don’t know yet,” Lorraine muttered. It had been a long day already, with a plane change in Atlanta and a two-hour delay. “How long will it take to reach El Mirador?”

“A couple of hours, possibly more—if the bus doesn’t break down, that is.”

“Oh, great.” She sighed loudly, wondering if anything else could possibly go wrong.

“Hey, it isn’t so bad,” Jason said. “You should’ve been at the dig I was on last week.” He explained that he was a part-time archaeology lecturer at a small college in Missouri; she didn’t recognize the name. He was here doing research for his doctoral thesis. He’d been in Mexico a month now, he told her, although this wasn’t his first trip. Lorraine guessed him to be in his mid-thirties. He had short dark hair and the ubiquitous sunglasses, and wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt tucked neatly into khaki pants. The freshness of his clothes made Lorraine feel even more despairing about the condition of her own.

“So you were working on this dig?”

“Yeah, and it was fantastic, other than this,” he said, lifting his bandaged hand. Jason entertained her for the next hour—the bus was late, of course—with tales of his adventures, including a harrowing description of the accident in which he’d injured his hand. He’d rescued one of the Mexican assistants on the dig from a knife-wielding pair of thieves. She shuddered at his dramatic telling.

Lorraine liked Jason. It was impossible not to. He was witty and cheerful, not to mention generous with his help. At one point he bought some melon slices from a street vendor and shared them with her. Lorraine hadn’t really been hungry, but the fruit quenched her growing thirst.

She’d never made friends with anyone so quickly. She suspected that everyone responded to Jason this way; his open exuberant personality encouraged confidences and camaraderie.

With billowing exhaust and much grinding of gears, the bus finally pulled into the station. Jason had been right to warn her about its likely condition. The rattletrap of a vehicle looked as if it’d been on the road since the Second World War. Its color was no longer distinguishable and half the windows were missing. In this heat, though, that was probably a blessing.

The bus was one thing, her fellow travelers another. The minute the bus rolled into the yard, people appeared from every direction. Adults and children and caged chickens. One man was hefting a pig under his arm.

“Go and get us the best seat you can,” Jason advised, urging her toward the bus. “I’ll make sure our luggage gets on board.”

Lorraine watched, amazed, as two men climbed on top of the bus and waited for Jason and another man to throw suitcases up to them. She didn’t envy anyone the task of lifting her suitcase, let alone hurling it eight feet off the ground.

After about ten minutes a breathless Jason climbed on board and collapsed onto the seat beside her.

“You mentioned you’d be traveling to someplace near El Mirador,” Lorraine said once he’d caught his breath.

“I’m on my way to another dig,” he said, shifting a bit to give her more room on the cramped seat. The narrow cushion was barely wide enough for one adult, let alone two.

He’d told Lorraine a little about Mayan ruins earlier, and she’d found it fascinating.

“There’s a dig near El Mirador?” She’d researched the tiny coastal town at the library and on the Internet, but hadn’t learned much. El Mirador had a population of less than a thousand. The economy of many of these towns along the coast depended, naturally enough, on the fishing industry, but there was little else. She couldn’t remember reading about Mayan ruins in the area around El Mirador, but that didn’t mean much.

“Actually,” Jason explained, “our El Mirador was named after another El Mirador, in Guatemala. It was an important Mayan site—one of the earliest. But there’s a Mayan temple a few miles from this El Mirador, too. It was discovered a few years ago, and they’ve only begun excavating, so I want to spend a few weeks there before I go home.”

“Home is Missouri, right?”

“Jefferson City,” he said. “Now what about you? Why are you traveling to El Mirador? It’s not like the town’s exactly a tourist destination.”

Lorraine took her time answering, wondering how much to tell Jason. She’d known him slightly longer than an hour. Granted, they’d become virtually instant friends, but still…This wasn’t the kind of personal information one generally shared on such recent acquaintance.

“My father lives there,” she said without elaborating.

“In El Mirador?” Jason’s eyes widened briefly. “What’s he doing there?”

“He’s a teacher.”

“The Peace Corps?”

Lorraine looked out the window. Considering how nervous she was about meeting her father, she should be grateful for someone to talk to. She’d tell Jason the whole story, she decided impulsively. He’d certainly told her a lot about his own background, and she sensed she could trust him. She took a deep breath. “To be honest, Jason, I don’t really know. I haven’t seen him since I was three—I was told he’d died of leukemia. I only found out a month ago that he’s actually alive, and once I did, I couldn’t stay away. My fiancé thinks I’ve gone off the deep end and maybe I have. I don’t know anymore.” She ended up telling Jason about her mother’s death, the letter she’d discovered with the items from the safe-deposit box and about Gary.

Jason took a moment to absorb everything. “Does your father know you’re coming?”

“Yes, of course,” she said, struggling not to sound defensive. Then she sighed. “I’m not sure.” Since he hadn’t been in Mérida to meet her, she no longer knew what to expect.

“But you’ve been in touch with him?”

“Oh, yes.” Lorraine had grown resentful when Gary asked her these same questions. But Jason seemed genuinely interested and concerned about her, while Gary had been so insistent. So overprotective. “I phoned and left a message at the school, but he didn’t return my call. When I didn’t hear back from him, I sent a letter. I was hoping he’d be waiting for me at the airport…but he wasn’t.”

“When did you mail the letter?”

“Beginning of last week.”

Jason shook his head. “I hate to tell you this, but he probably hasn’t gotten it yet. The mail—” They hit a rut in the road just then. The bus jolted badly and sent both Jason and Lorraine flying upward. Her teeth felt as if they’d been shaken loose, and she heard Jason’s cry of pain as his head slammed into the roof. The pig escaped, squealing as it raced toward the back of the bus. Undisturbed by the commotion, the driver didn’t even slow down.

After a few minutes, everything was quiet again, and Jason finished his sentence. “The mail in this part of the world is notoriously slow.”

“Oh, dear.”

“You should probably assume that your father has no idea you’re coming,” he warned her.

His words sobered Lorraine. She’d traveled thirteen hundred miles, the last part under deplorable conditions. Now there was reason to believe that her arrival would take her father completely by surprise.

Ever since that night the dream had awakened him, Thomas Dancy hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Ginny. He realized this probably had more to do with Azucena than Ginny. His common-law wife was due to deliver their third child any day.