The Santiago Sisters

‘Oh.’ There was a pause.

He was looking directly at her. ‘Calida, is your mother in?’

Just like that, the illusion of her maturity was shattered. Of course Daniel saw her as a kid: she was only thirteen, even if sometimes she felt twice that age.

‘She’s indoors,’ said Calida. ‘I’ll take you to her.’

He smiled a smile she would carry with her forever. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

Daniel Cabrera got the job. Julia took one look at him and hired him on the spot.

‘A good solid man about the place,’ she said, brushing her hair for the first time in weeks. Calida noticed how her mama’s eyes lit up when Daniel walked in, and how she kept playing with her hair and erupting into light, tinkling laughs.

‘She likes him,’ Calida confided in her sister.

Teresita was unfazed. ‘You’re only mad because you like him too …’

‘I do not!’

‘Liar.’

‘Cállate, shut up!’

‘I’ve seen how red you go.’ Teresita put on a silly voice and danced around: ‘Oh, Daniel, you’re so handsome! You’re so perfect! I think I love you, Daniel!’

Calida smiled in spite of herself. ‘You’re an idiot.’ But she couldn’t help her blush—and she couldn’t think of anything else to say except to repeat her protest, but the more she repeated it, the more it exposed that Teresita was right. Daniel Cabrera occupied her thoughts twenty-four hours a day. Whenever she was alone, she pictured his arms around her, his golden head bowed to hers and his warm breath on her neck. They stayed like that in her imagination, just still, unsure how the moment moved on. Calida felt there was more, but it was reckless and adult and she didn’t understand it, and to feel his embrace, if only in her mind, was, for the moment, enough.

But it wasn’t Julia she should have been afraid of. It was her twin.

‘Daniel should move into the outhouse,’ said Teresita, after supper one night.

She delivered the suggestion with a careful insouciance that immediately rang alarm bells. Calida looked up, tried to find a way into her sister’s countenance but, as happened so often lately, she could not. Her heart quickened. Teresita took a tight sip of her drink and in that moment she knew. She didn’t know how she knew, but she did. They had been twins too long. Her sister wanted him, too.

‘There’s running water out there,’ Teresita went on, ‘and he could come up to the house for food. I’d like to have him close all the time … Wouldn’t you, Calida?’

Teresita’s eyes met hers, but, instead of the reassurance she’d been hoping for—that the proposition was for Calida’s benefit, a selfless act made in knowledge of her devotion—instead she met a dead-on challenge. Teresita’s gaze was one of sheer resolve. Turns out I’m into him. What are you going to do about it?

‘That’s a wonderful idea,’ said Julia.

Calida swallowed her distress. She stood and cleared the bowls. All night she refused to talk to Teresita, or even look at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ her sister asked. ‘Are you angry with me?’ But Calida couldn’t form her accusation. Teresita would deny it, in any case; say she’d imagined it. But Calida knew better. She had seen the confrontation in her sister’s regard, the glint of cunning. It made her want to give up, because if she were ever pitted against Teresita in a game of love, she knew who would win. Her twin was magnificent, and she was ordinary. It was as simple as that.

And so it happened. Over the coming months, Daniel became part of the ranch, as integral to Calida as the horses and the mountains and the sunset. Slowly but surely, she fell in love with him. She loved the fact he only spoke when there was something to say. She loved his smile, which seemed to find humour not just in the joke but in a private comedy that existed only between them. She loved his focus as he worked. She loved his passion. She loved his strength. She loved his silhouette as he rode off into the dust, the black shape of his cowboy hat and his boots upturned in the stirrups.

She loved how he taught her bareback riding; and when they went together to retrieve a wild pony that had strayed from their neighbour’s land, he showed her how to capture the animal and rein her in, bucking and twisting, until she calmed.

Once, Calida witnessed him showering. It was dawn, and he wouldn’t have expected them to be up yet. She watched from her window, her blood pounding.

Daniel used an outdoor steel tub, a bar of soap, and a hose connected to a hand-driven pump. He removed his T-shirt. His chest elicited in her a confusion of feelings: desire at the map of taut, bronzed muscle, and the trail of hair that vanished into his jeans, but also a sharp tug somewhere deeper and more affectionate. She felt that she knew him, every part of him, even though she hadn’t met those parts yet. She saw him as a stallion, wounded by a past encounter, untamed and untrusting, but that she might whisper to him and find she could gain that trust, and it would be a gem far rarer than the rarest treasure in the deepest well in the most distant part of the earth.

He pumped the handle, tendons in his back rippling, and the water came quick and hard. He bent over the basin, head bowed, and his hair turned light to dark.

Only when his hands went to his jeans and he started to unbuckle them did Calida look away, pulling the material over the window. Part of her wanted to peel it back and see, but the other part was stronger. It knew that one day it would be her hands on Daniel’s jeans, her unbuckling, and she would wait patiently for that day because it would be perfect, and that as fast as she undid him he would be undoing her, unravelling and unravelling until she was a spool of silk in his fingers.

December arrived, and with it the first flush of summer.

In the kitchen, Teresita was up, already dressed in her riding gear. The sisters never went riding without the other, and Calida asked: ‘Where are you going?’

‘Cattle herding,’ said her twin, as if this were something she did alone every day. Calida heard Daniel getting the horses ready in the yard, and, in her own nightshirt, felt panicked and unprepared.

‘I’ll come too.’

‘We’ll be fine on our own.’

Daniel came in. He smiled when he saw Calida. ‘Ready?’

‘Calida’s not coming,’ said Teresita.

‘Actually, I am.’ She recalled her sister’s defiance over the supper table and a flash of anger spurted in her chest. ‘You’ll wait for me, won’t you?’ she asked him.

His smile widened. ‘Sure.’

‘It’s a stupid idea.’ Teresita scowled, folding her arms.

‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Daniel.

By nine o’clock they were crossing the steppe. The wilderness was dotted with beech forests and glittering rivers. Calida was uncomfortable on Diego’s old criollo, and, despite the extra sheepskin she had piled on top of the saddle, she lagged behind.

All morning she was forced to watch Teresita up ahead, riding alongside Daniel, as if it were just the two of them.

Approaching midday, the heat became searing. Dust swirled in their eyes and nostrils, and they tied scarves around their faces to ward off the worst. The horses’ hooves picked a path between rocks and boulders. Calida saw Daniel finish an apple then lean forward, deep over his animal’s mane, to feed him the remains. When they stopped to rest, he tethered the horses in the shade and, before fetching a drink for himself, he filled a bucket with water from the stream and poured it gently over their heads, working it through their coats and removing the metal bits from between their teeth. Calida wished her father were here, because Diego would have liked Daniel.

The herd was on the other side of the valley and they rode hard to reach it in the light. Mustering was one of her favourite things: the rush of the cattle as they swarmed across the plains and the beat of their tread echoing across the land; the chase the horses gave as they circled the drive—and how, when the job was done, the beasts poured like water through a funnel into the next prairie. When night came, they set up camp in a sheltered vale, by the remains of a fire all ash and dust from their last visit.

Daniel warmed empanadas, and cooked an estofado stew, which he prepared on a wooden board. The handle of his facón was silver and intricately carved, and Calida decided it was of personal importance to him—a gift, perhaps—and remembered the family he had mentioned, so briefly, in Europe. Who were they?

After they had eaten, Daniel lit a cigarette and lay back on the arrangement of sheepskin and leather that would serve as his bed. His features danced in the flames. He let smoke out in a thin plume that shot deep into the night.

‘Daniel, will you help me?’

Teresita was struggling to lift the saddle from the ground, caught up as it was in her stirrups and reins. Calida sat on a log, her chin on her knees, and watched.

‘Here, like this,’ he said. Teresita giggled. Calida glanced away.

‘Should I set up next to you?’ Teresita asked.

‘It’s the best shelter,’ he replied. ‘Better to be under the trees.’

‘Better to be private …’