Thirteen

LATE that afternoon, Tommy came home with enough fish to feed them for two days, and good news.
"Ate! Mama! The chairman told me I can work in the fishery or in the paddy field starting tomorrow! He also told me I can start learning to drive the jeepney just inside the hacienda in case they needed a hand in transporting anything from anywhere inside here. I have a job!"
They roasted enough fish for their supper and cooked the rest in herbs and spices.
They had a very enjoyable dinner and after the dishes were done, their mother asked them to stay with her for a bit in the living room as she read from her Bible aloud for them and prayed before she went to bed.
Tommy remained in the small living room to read one of his school books.
She, on the other hand, checked to make sure every window was closed and the doors in the front and back were locked.
Closing one of the windows, she stopped abruptly.
She thought she heard the neighing of a horse.
But when she looked outside, she saw nothing.
Oh, it was dark of course. But she stayed there for a while, looking out, and nothing else moved except leaves on trees swaying in the night breeze. In the air, she could still smell the burnt smell of coal and roasted fish.
She smiled a little.
This was one of the better days that she could remember. She hoped their family prayer tonight would allow them more of this kind of day.
She would love nothing more than for her small family to get better.
Maybe someone riding a horse had ridden past and now gone.
*Maybe it was a Tikbalang?* she even thought gamely. It was one of their local mythical creatures. She had never felt one or been scared of anything inside the hacienda, though. Ever.
She closed the window and as she passed the living room, she bent down to kiss her brother on the top of his head.
Her eyes almost watered when he looked up and did not even protest. Instead, he smiled at her, telling her in his 'grownup' way he loved her.
She smiled back.
She was still smiling when she checked to make sure her mother was sleeping okay before she lay down on her side of the bed to sleep.

*THAT’S her.*
It was her.
That beautiful face, looking ethereal in the moon's light as she stood by the window looking out towards a different direction than where Enrique was, sitting on his horse.
His eyes watched her, while his body felt such inexplicable hunger. He had been obsessed the whole day trying to find who she was and where she lived.
He couldn't be put off. He must find his lady in red.
Imagine his shock when he found out the young woman he had ruined last night lived right here in the hacienda.
And the worse of it all was to find out she wasn't a prostitute. She wasn't a sex worker.
She was an ordinary hardworking woman pressed into selling herself for a night to pay for what her young brother stole to pay for their mother's hospital bill.
Brad was flabbergasted.
The motherfucker couldn't believe it himself. He swore he did not know.
He started explaining that there were college students who would sell sex and Enrique did not even want him to finish. He did not need details.
He was too drunk last night but he had noticed something different with her.
He somehow knew she wasn't an experienced woman. He saw the fear in her eyes. He remembered how overwhelmed she was.
He sobered up after that and he made love with her as if he treasured her.
But it had been too much. Her beauty and innocent allure had been too heady for him to stay gentle the whole time and he just...
The blood on the bed sheets.
And still, right now, he felt horny as fuck.
What a monster he was.
He tried to know more about the family living in one of those huts on the edges of the hacienda.
The father had worked faithfully with his dad before he passed away.
Somehow, the name was familiar and he couldn’t believe it was the same person so he was going to ask his father about it later.
He thought that family left. If it was the same man, Enrique couldn’t feel more guilty.
Relatives lived too far away in another province and the mother had a frail heart.
The young son was known to be performing well in school and was a good kid, but left schooling when his mother had a bout of sickness during enrolment time.
The daughter was known to be hardworking and very, very beautiful.
She would be more beautiful if she could have good clothes and live in better conditions, he thought ash he fought the constriction drowning the heart inside his chest.
His father's secretary told him people liked the widow and her kids, and his dad would regularly ask if they were doing okay.
That he was planning to give a scholarship to the kid in college and give them work in the hacienda when they graduated.
He had offered to the daughter, but she declined because her mother would need a companion at home being too sick as she was.
Well, Enrique could do something about that.
He couldn't believe how someone had taken advantage of the needs of the family and took the opportunity to do something so unbelievably unfair.
And he'd unknowingly been part of it.
Even when she had closed the window and the light was turned off in the kitchen, Enrique stayed a while, watching the house, wondering about the life his lady in red had been dealing with since then, moving stuff here and there in his mind, not even catching himself as he rearranged her life inside his head.
*How is she coping after what I’ve done to her?*
He swallowed the guilt that went up and blocked his throat. Then he finally moved to turn his horse towards the rest house.
He's going to find out more come the morrow.
Tonight, he had another demon to curb, he thought as his lips formed a bitter smile.
This would even be worse than last night. He would be alone in his bed, thinking about her and how he'd possessed her. Wondered if she cried about what she'd lost to a brute of a man.
What happened last night was over. He couldn't take it back.
It chafed at him that there was no reason for her at all to want to allow him to change the experience into something better.
Then he felt repelled of himself that he would even think this possible.
He was still a brute for wanting her even then when he had no right. Not even if he paid for it.
Riding with its load that was heavier because of his dark thoughts, the horse moved away from the lit hut into the stillness of the night