Everliving: Day 11

Word Count: 66,026

Summary of Events:

Bethania was summoned to her father and told that people believed that she and Reynaldo were in love and he was going to make them stand trial to determine whether they were or not. Quique and the pirates were getting ready to set out for the day when men from San Iago started chasing them to get the horses back; they hid in the jungle and started looking around for the Fountain of Youth. Bethania went into the Royal Archives to look into information on Reynaldo and see if she couldn't confirm her belief that Reynaldo was not in love with her, as she wasn't in love with him . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

"The paper on the top was a death certificate for Sofía Nadia Gabriela Elena Teresa Feliciana Alejandra Ramirez Barán, stating that she had died the same year as Bethania's own mother, but the cause of death was stated as being illness.

Bethania shifted her jaw. Reynaldo had been a widower for fifteen years, and yet he hadn't remarried.

She went through the papers behind, including a birth certificate, by whose year given Bethania was able to figure out Sofía would've been thirty seven, if she were still alive, but being as she'd died fifteen years previously, she'd only been twenty two.

There was also the marriage certificate for her and Reynaldo's wedding, which had taken place when she was eighteen. They'd thus been married for only four years. Bethania felt rather sad. Reynaldo had gotten married at the age of twenty four and been widowed by the time he was thirty.

Other than that, there wasn't really that much information as far as Bethania was concerned, so she moved onto the next bundle, which contained information on Reynaldo and Sofía's eldest child, a daughter they'd named Isabella. She'd been born hardly a year after they'd been married and lived for five years, outliving her mother by only two. The cause of death was listed as a fall.

Bethania felt a twist within herself. Reynaldo had saved her from a fall that would've assuredly killed her, and yet one of his children had died in a fall. No wonder he'd fussed over her so. She wondered how he had managed to disguise his panic from her, surely he had to have been panicked if he'd lost a child in a similar way.

She moved onto the next bundle. It was information regarding a son, who'd been named Emilio and had been born less than a year after Isabella. He'd died of an illness when he'd been a year old.

Closing that bundle, Bethania moved onto the next bundle, which had information regarding the youngest child Reynaldo and Sofía could've had. The child was a daughter, named Nadia, who had lived twelve years, having been born less than a year after her brother, and within a year of her mother's passing.

Nadia's cause of death was an illness pertaining to her disability. Bethania furrowed her brow and flipped through the remainder of the bundle. There was a paper dating from Nadia's seventh year which registered her as disabled, and said that the disability was an inability to walk caused by a horse-related accident.

So that was how and why Reynaldo was so comfortable with carrying her about. He'd carried his own daughter for about five years before she'd gotten sick and died. Bethania felt so terrible for him, and she felt that the facts surrounding his daughters and their demises solidified the fact that he'd helped her out of a much more paternal interest than a romantic interest."