Santa Lucia
Chapter 04 - Santa Lucia
Santa Lucia stood east of Boulder on land everyone in the Vargas family called worthless after the fire.
Elena had heard the story so often she could recite it with the numb rhythm of family myth.
The old mission house burned during a summer storm.
Marisol’s keepsakes were lost.
The chapel collapsed.
The land was abandoned because grief lived there.
Isabel hated old sorrow, she said.
Elena believed the story until the morning after she ran barefoot through rain, when Matthew Carranza drove her through a narrow dirt road lined with cottonwoods and stopped before a whitewashed gate covered in ivy.
Beyond it stood a house with red tile roof, arched windows, and a small chapel attached to the east side.
Not burned.
Not ruined.
Waiting.
Elena sat in the back seat and could not open the door.
Rosa touched her shoulder from the front passenger seat.
“Breathe first,” she said. “Old houses do not enjoy fainting.”
Elena laughed because the alternative was sobbing.
Matthew waited outside in the pale morning light, hands in his coat pockets, giving her time.
That, more than his explanations, made her step out.
The air smelled of wet earth and sage.
No mansion perfume. No polished marble. No Isabel’s lilies arranged by staff who were never allowed to sit.
Santa Lucia smelled alive.
The brass key opened the chapel door.
Inside, dust lay over pews and candle stands, but the stained-glass windows remained whole. Blue light spilled across the stone floor. At the back, beneath a small wooden statue of Saint Lucia, was a narrow stairway descending into darkness.
Elena looked at Matthew.
He handed her a flashlight.
“I’ll go first if you ask.”
“No,” she said. “My mother left it for me.”
He nodded and stepped aside.
The stairs led to a small underground room with low shelves, metal boxes, and a desk wrapped in canvas. The air was cool and dry.
At the center of the desk sat a white envelope.
Elena knew her mother’s handwriting before she saw the name.
For Elena, when the house lies.
Her legs weakened.
Rosa moved behind her but did not touch unless invited.
Elena opened the envelope.
My sweet girl,
If you are reading this, then someone used fear to send you running, and I am sorry I could not stand at the door myself.
Do not let them tell you Santa Lucia burned. It did not. Do not let them tell you I was fragile. I was tired. There is a difference.
Elena covered her mouth.
Matthew looked toward the shelves, giving her privacy with the only courtesy he could offer now.
She kept reading.
Your father loved me, but Rafael was easily dazzled by people who needed saving. Isabel understood that before I did. If she is in our house, read every paper before signing anything. If she calls you unstable, ask who benefits from your silence.
The trust is under the chapel stairs.
The ledger is behind Saint Lucia’s eyes.
The key is in my burgundy coat.
Elena looked up at the statue.
Rosa whispered, “Madre de Dios.”
Matthew carefully lifted the wooden statue from its niche. Behind one glass eye was a tiny compartment. Inside rested a rolled leather ledger no thicker than a hymn book.
Elena took it.
Her mother’s handwriting filled the first pages.
Dates.
Transfers.
Names.
Isabel March payments.
Dr. Harold Voss consults.
Rafael Vargas medication schedule.
Carranza land shares.
Elena’s majority trust release at age twenty-two.
Elena stopped.
“My trust released when I turned twenty-two?”
Matthew’s face darkened.
“You turned twenty-two last month.”
“Yes.”
“And Isabel planned tonight one month later.”
Rosa made a sound of disgust.
Elena flipped pages.
There it was.
At twenty-two, Elena Marisol Vargas inherits full voting control of Santa Lucia Holdings, provided she is legally competent and not under medical guardianship.
The words blurred.
Legally competent.
Medical guardianship.
Doctors waiting at the mansion.
Her stepmother had not been trying to calm a dramatic girl.
She had been trying to make Elena legally disappear before she knew she owned anything.
Matthew’s phone buzzed.
He checked it and went still.
“Isabel?”
“No.” His voice was grim. “Your father’s old nurse.”
Elena froze.
“My father’s nurse is in Arizona.”
“That is what Isabel says.”
Matthew turned the phone so she could see.
A message from a woman named Adele Ruiz.
Rafael is awake. Isabel moved him again. If Elena found the coat, tell her he never signed the guardianship papers.
Elena sat down hard on the chapel step.
Her father had been ill for two years, hidden in a private neurological clinic after what Isabel called a severe decline. Elena had been allowed short visits, always supervised, always when Rafael was quiet, medicated, distant.
“Moved him again?” Elena whispered.
Matthew looked at the ledger.
Then at the message.
“Elena,” he said, careful and quiet, “where do you think your father is?”
She stared at the white chapel walls.
For two years she had believed she had already lost him in all the ways that mattered.
Now the old house seemed to breathe around her.
May you like
“I don’t know,” she said.
And that was the most terrifying answer of all.
