The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes - 9

Boston

1900

The book was terrible.

Eva glanced down at the page in front of her, the words covered in angry slashes and frustrated scribbles. She’d thought that being here, having this adventure, would help her finish her novel, but instead, the words had become even more elusive.

The story she had been working on in Havana, the one that she had spent years of her life on no longer spoke to her. Her characters were strangers, the setting didn’t come alive as it once had, and the doubt that she had experienced at the beginning when she decided to undertake something as audacious as writing a novel reared its ugly head once more.

It was enough to make her want to cry.

Or scream.

Or scratch out another sentence or two.

It had been easier in the beginning. When she had first decided that she was going to write a novel—the blank page in her notebook had felt like potential, like an untapped world waiting to be claimed. There had been joy in those first words, in the promise of them, the way that the sentences hung together and dangled after one another and began to take shape into something she could scarcely believe she had created. She’d felt like a proud mother. But then, something had shifted. The blank page had started to feel less like freedom and more like a demand.

Feed me. Fill me.

And then that freedom had turned into a clear need to answer the inevitable question that she had learned to loathe:

What happened next?

But now, this was perhaps the worst stage of the entire process. Now she was close to being finished, so close that she could taste it, and the doubts had crept in, the realization that if she finally did publish the novel, not only did she have to come up with a title for it, but people were going to read it. People who knew her, her students who sat in her classes, her friends, her fellow teachers, her school principal. People were going to read it and be privy to her innermost thoughts, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that level of intimacy, was prepared to feel so known. Perhaps that was why it was so difficult to finish the novel now that it was no longer an idea in abstract, but a fully formed entity that would one day leave her to be consumed by others. Or was it the characters that had stopped talking to her? The story? She wished she knew.

She’d come here with the hopes that a change of scenery from the lodging she shared with Dolores would do the trick, the grand Gothic building that housed Harvard’s library providing the perfect setting for her to finally break through the block that had been hounding her.

It hadn’t worked.

“I’ll admit, I get that expression sometimes when I’m writing, but since I don’t think you have a frustratingly stubborn manuscript, you’ve sparked my curiosity. What did that notebook do to you?”

Eva glanced up, surprised by the interaction, the American accent pulling her out of the scene in Cienfuegos—disastrous as the writing was—and back into the library at Gore Hall.

James stood in front of her table, peering down at her with that same faintly amused expression he’d worn the night they met. He was much as she’d remembered him—the same piercing eyes, his dark hair just a bit mussed, a smudge of ink peeking out from the cuff of his white shirt beneath the beige suit he wore. He looked like all the polished men of Harvard, but there was something slightly disheveled under the urbane facade.

She’d thought about him a great deal since she saw him at the dance two nights ago, wondering when their paths would cross again. There had been a concert and reception at Sanders Theatre last night and she’d looked for James, but if he was there, she hadn’t seen him.

She’d written about him, about the emotions she experienced when she saw him, that strange, feverish sensation she’d only ever read about before in books having finally struck her. The words she had penned didn’t fit in the book she was working on, didn’t belong in this scene between a boy and his grandfather on their farm in Cienfuegos, the scene she needed to write but eluded her, but she was compelled to put the words on the page regardless, to dissect every moment of the memory.

“It’s nothing,” she replied, sweeping the notebook closed in front of her before he could read what was written there. Her novel was in Spanish, and the odds that he spoke Spanish were small—surely, he would have mentioned it if he did or offered a few words in Spanish during their conversation—but she wasn’t going to take the chance.

“You’re a terrible liar, you know.” He said it conversationally as though they were old friends rather than new acquaintances.

He didn’t bother asking her if she minded before he slid into the seat across from her.

“American history, then? An incredibly dull subject,” he teased with a quirk of his lips and wicked fire in his eyes.

His voice was a notch too loud for the library, his presence drawing a gaze or two in their direction.

He seemed supremely unconcerned by the attention, whereas she wished she could simply disappear, that their meeting again could have happened in private rather than under the full weight and attention of Gore Hall.

“Not American history, no.”

They had lectures on American History, as well as the American school system, Geography, English, History of the Spanish Colonies, Libraries, and Psychology. The women studied Kindergarten Education and the men took classes in Woodworking.

James leaned back in his chair; his arms folded over his chest. “I’ll admit you have me on tenterhooks now.”

Surprise filled her. “Why?”

“Because I’m curious about you. About what interests you—and frustrates you,” he added, gesturing toward the notebook. “I very much enjoyed our talk outside of the gymnasium the other night. I’ll confess I’ve been wondering when I would run into you again, hoping it would be soon.”

Something fluttered in the vicinity of her heart, and she glanced back down at her notebook, not ready for him to read the emotions on her apparently expressive face.

“I write,” she said after a beat.

“You’re a writer?”

He sounded far more intrigued by the proposition than she imagined he would be.

Eva forced herself to look up from her notebook, mustering every ounce of composure she’d developed speaking in front of young ladies who weren’t always eager to learn.

“I am.”

There. She’d said it. Claimed it.

James leaned forward, erasing the distance between them so they met halfway across the table. “What do you write?”

Eva took a deep breath. “I’m working on a novel.”

If he dismissed her or mocked her, then at least she would know what sort of man he was. Better to discover that now than to let this attraction deepen if he wasn’t worthy of her interest or affection.

“So, you understood, then—when I told you about my frustrations.”

She nodded.

“What’s your novel about?” he asked her.

“About a family in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in the late nineteenth century. It follows different generations as they make their way through the turbulent times on their farm. I’m telling the story from the perspective of the aunt in one time period and her nephew in another.” She hesitated, trying to bring her thoughts together. “I’ll be honest, I’ve changed the main character at least a half dozen times. The nephew is speaking to me now, though, so I think he’s the one.”

“Do they talk to you? Your characters?”

He leaned even closer as he said it, so that their faces were inches away, and then Eva realized she had been edging closer to him as well so that they were sitting surprisingly close together and the prying eyes simply disappeared, the rest of Gore Hall no longer existing at all, but rather as though they were alone once more, ensconced in their own private world.

This was the connection she had craved, the ability to share this part of herself and be understood.

“They do,” Eva admitted. “That’s how I settled on the nephew as the one who needed to tell this part of the story. He didn’t exist at first, but when I was building the family in my mind, he appeared. And then once he did, well—I couldn’t get him to stop talking. He and his grandfather are very close. His grandfather is preparing him to take over the family’s small farm.”

“It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? How you can be going about your day seemingly attuned to everything happening around you, and yet, in your mind you can be in a different time and place entirely.”

“Yes. It’s how I survived the war, I suppose.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could scoop them back up inside herself.

“How so?”

She opened her mouth to give him the pat answer to discourage further questions, but the truth escaped instead.

“I gave my characters my feelings. My fears. My hopes. The novel isn’t about the war. I couldn’t have written about it even if I wanted to. It feels too fresh, too painful. Too much. But I had all these emotions inside of me. I—” She stumbled over the words, the emotions behind them. “I—I didn’t know what to do with them so at the end of each day, I would write. And the story began to take shape. On the days when I had no reason to get up in the morning—particularly after I lost my mother—my characters made me feel a little less alone. If they could get through the challenges in their lives, then it gave me hope that I could survive mine.”

He shook his head, looking more than a little abashed. “You humble me, you know.”

“Do I? How?”

“You do. The way you describe your writing, what it means to you and the way you created it, to live in such a tumultuous time and to see art born from it—” He hesitated. “I suppose I’m figuring out what I want to say, how to make it matter.”

His cheeks flushed, and now it was his turn to look embarrassed, as though she had wrestled a confession from him that he hadn’t been ready to share, putting them on more equal footing.

“A wise person once told me that there are many ways to love your country, many ways to matter,” she countered.

He smiled. “You remembered that?”

She nodded, and then because he seemed vulnerable and it unsettled her somewhat, she told him the rest—“I’ve thought about our conversation a great deal since we talked.”

“As have I.” He leaned back, glancing around as though he’d just realized that they weren’t alone. “Have you been to the beach yet?”

“The beach?”

He nodded.

“No, I haven’t.”

“Come with me. Are you free tomorrow afternoon? I’ll take you to my favorite ice cream shop, too.”

She grinned. “The beach and ice cream? That sounds like the perfect outing.”

“Where are you staying?”

She gave him the address where she and Dolores were living for the summer.

“It’s a date, then.”

She couldn’t quite form a reply, equal parts nerves and excitement warring inside her. If she had to wager a guess, she wouldn’t get a word of writing done between then and now. And then, one of the unlikeliest of thoughts—what on earth was she going to wear?

“I should leave,” James said, making no motion to move, his gaze intent on her. “I came here to do some research on my book.”

There were so many questions she wanted to ask him about his writing, but given the insecurity he had shared, she didn’t want to push him too much, didn’t want to make him feel self-conscious about the block he was experiencing.

Eva had a sudden vision of them sharing the table together, working on their books side by side, and while she knew she wasn’t ready for that yet, that the newness of this feeling inside her, the novelty of their acquaintance was far too distracting, the promise of it settled neatly inside of her.

“Best of luck with it.”

He tossed her a wry grin. “I’ll take all the luck I can get, thank you very much.”

She had to ask—

“What’s it about?”

He hesitated. “An ambitious young reporter who finds a body in the city. Are you familiar with the Manhattan Well Murder?”

She shook her head.

“It was a famous murder and subsequently infamous trial one hundred years ago. The case inspired my story—it’s a fictional story, but my hero stumbles across a similar crime and becomes embroiled in a sensationalized trial.”

“It sounds fascinating.”

“I hope it will be. Right now, it’s just a lot of good ideas and very poor execution. I wanted to find some inspiration in the real-life case that would help shape my fictional one. Hopefully, when I see you tomorrow, I will have progressed on the entire business. There’s a small publisher in Boston run by two brothers who is interested in the novel—at least the idea I told them about—but it’s taken far longer than I’d hoped to have the thing ready for them.”

He rose from his seat. “Your novel—can I read it sometime?” James asked.

“It’s in Spanish,” she replied, somewhat grateful for the privacy that her native tongue afforded her. “Do you read Spanish?” she asked, knowing full well he likely didn’t.

“No, I don’t. It’s a shame. I would very much like to read your work. Will you write something in English for me one day?”

Her heart thumped madly in her chest. There was something about the way he said I would very much like to read your work that made it as intimate as if he had taken her hand and stroked the inside of her wrist where her pulse now jumped.

“Perhaps I will,” she replied, and while she had intended for her words to be light and carefree, they sounded very much like a vow.