Read Blood in the Valencian Soil (Secrets of Spain) for Free Online Page A

worked in Cuenca when she got pregnant. My father thought that Cayetano was from somewhere around there.”
    “Perhaps you need to go to Cuenca,” Cayetano suggested. “Have you ever been?”
    “No. It’s not that far from Valencia, but I’ve never visited. I came to live in Spain for reasons that had nothing to do with my heritage, so until now I have had no reason to find Cayetano. It seems that information is hard to find. It seems he just vanished into thin air. That is why my grandmother returned to New Zealand at the end of the war. He just abandoned her.”
    “Are you sure he died? I mean… maybe he just ran off?”
    “You mean, am I sure that he wasn’t dragged from his bed in the night, murdered and stuffed in a shallow grave?”
    “Given the time period, anything could have happened.”
    “I guess anything is possible. From the way my father spoke, his mother must have told him that his father was dead. I can only trust what she said. Of course, I have no one I can ask these things.” She watched as his fingers curved along the back of her hand. When he touched her, it had sent a sharp spike through her senses. Far from home, far from reality, it seemed natural to be out with a man.
    Cayetano shrugged. “I have both of my parents. I also have my mother’s parents in my life. I’m blessed. Even so, if I asked my grandparents about the war, they would not speak of it. El pacto del olvido.”
    Luna held her tongue for a moment. The pact of forgetting. Nobody wanted to talk about the civil war, or even of the 35 years that the dictator Francisco Franco held on to Spain after his victory. Franco was a subject that was never discussed. She looked at the man across the table. He was probably about 40, so born in the late sixties, a time where the years of starvation were over in Spain, yet still a time of exceptional difficulty and atrocious crimes were still committed against innocent people. The Spain they sat in today and the Spain that Cayetano would have been born into were very different. Generalissimo Franco had died in 1975, a year before Luna was born. Spaniards born before Franco’s death, and those born after had totally different lives and upbringings. It was not something she had ever discussed with a Spaniard. La Transición, the transition to democracy had been achieved by smothering the past and Luna knew she was up against decades of fear when looking for her grandfather.
    “Enchufe,” Cayetano said.
    “ What about it?” Luna asked. “I’m a foreigner, I have no enchufe.” Enchufe, knowing a person who knows someone who knows someone who could get you whatever you want. A little nepotism never hurt anyone. Except those who had no enchufe.
    “But I do. My sister, Sofía, she works at the Registro Civil. I’ll call her, and see if she can help you. You can’t run back and forward between Madrid and Valencia for a piece of paper that may not exist.”
    Luna glanced down at her hand again. Now, a ll of his fingers caressed the back of her hand. His large fingers more or less covered her entire hand. She glanced back up at Cayetano; he had leaned right forward over the table as he looked back at her. His honey brown eyes were soft as they gazed back at her, and flecks of green in his eyes sparkled. Luna became aware of how revealing her low cut dress was. She had brought it to keep her cool in the hot weather, but with the fiery eyes of the Spaniard on her, it turned up the heat. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think Madrid was worth the trip.”
    “I would like to think so,” Cayetano replied. “You never know what you will find in Madrid.”
    “Maybe something I didn’t know to look for.”
    “Perhaps.” His fingers began to trail up her arm, and they delighted every inch of skin they touched. “How was ‘The Garden of Earthly Delights’ at the Prado? As sexually liberating as you hoped?”
    Another playful smile grace d her face. “Yes, thank you. I’m a believer in