The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (12)

He was delighted to discover that the woman had struck out on her own but was not yet married. Isabela wasn’t home, but Orquídea had been at the table drinking café con leche and reading a book for school.

They recognized each other without needing to speak. Sometimes blood recognizes blood. It was in the beauty marks that formed a perfect triangle over their left cheekbones, in the way they craned their heads to the side to examine the oddity before them. It was in the crooked slant of their full lips, which accentuated a dimple that would claim hearts across time zones and hemispheres.

But then he spoke. He did not say his name. He did not ask for hers. He withdrew a salt-stained coin purse from the inside of his vest, took Orquídea’s small hand in his. He placed the pouch on her palm and said, “Don’t come looking for me.”

He returned to the docks, and that was when Orquídea learned that she was exactly like her father, untethered, belonging to nowhere and nothing and no one, like a ship lost to the seas.





4

THE PILGRIMAGE TO FOUR RIVERS




Thirteen hours into their drive, Marimar leaned over to touch the radio and Rey slapped her hand away.

“We’ve listened to this song a hundred times,” she shouted, sucking on the dregs of her drive-through soda.

“Fifty. Don’t be so dramatic.”

“You have the musical taste of a frat guy named Chad.”

Rey laughed, one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the open window. The I-70 was empty across the stretch through Indianapolis. Other than stopping to pick up some greasy food, they’d made excellent time.

“?‘Here I Go Again’ is a classic,” Rey argued. “When it’s your turn at the wheel, you can pick the music.”

“But you won’t let me drive.”

His light brown eyes narrowed with mischief. “Exactly.”

“Fine. When we get to the house, I’m the designated DJ.”

Rey sucked his teeth. He reached for his cigarette box and pulled one out from the yellow pack. “Do we really have to do this?”

“The answer is still yes,” Marimar answered. She was barefoot, her heels propped up on the dashboard. Red painted toes wiggled against the cool midwestern air. “She’s our grandmother.”

“Orquídea Divina is finally lonely. And old. She wants attention and this is the only way to get it.” He lit his cigarette with one hand and tossed the metal lighter, another relic from his long-dead father, in the messy catchall below the radio.

“How old is she?” Marimar wondered. “I want to say that she’s somewhere between sixty and eighty.”

“You know, one time I tried to go through her things to find what she was hiding. Why she was so secretive. She had a fucking python in her drawer.”

“It escaped from a nearby zoo.”

“And it just happened to be in her dresser? Okay.” Rey scrunched up his face in mock-agreement. “It bit me.”

“Pythons aren’t poisonous. Also, I think everyone’s tried to go through grandma’s things and never found a snake, or anything super expensive worth all the secrecy. Maybe now we’re going to find out.”

“The valley’s worth gold. You think she’ll divide it among the remaining children? Oh, I call the record player. Maybe you’ll get the porcelain tea set to complete the one you stole.”

Marimar rolled her eyes and stared out at the flatlands, the highway that stretched ahead of them like an infinite movie backdrop that never seemed to get any closer. Something inside her twisted at the thought of dividing her grandmother’s things like a pie. It was bound to get messy.

“You’re not sad?” she asked.

The song restarted and Rey exhaled his disillusionment with his cigarette smoke. “I would be if she had picked up the phone every once in a while. Most grandmothers shower their grandkids with presents and praise.”

“Is that what you want? Gifts and a pat on the back?”

“I got my fucking Bachelor’s in two years instead of four and got my CPA license. I think that deserved something.” He flicked ash outside his window and leaned his head back. “I’m calling it. She’s just being dramatic. She’s probably sorry that she kicked everyone out of the house, and this is the only way to get us to come back.”

“Or, she’s telling the truth and we’ve been making too many stops. We might get there too late. What if she’s really sick?”

“Such a different tune than when she drove you away and you came to live with us. I believe your words were ‘I never want to see that old witch ever again.’?”

Marimar remembered sitting in her room after her mother’s funeral. Cause of death was drowning. How had her mother drowned in the same lake she’d swam in her whole life? How could her mother, who’d won meets in school and swam in the Pacific Ocean, have drowned? It didn’t make sense, but Sheriff Palladino had said her mother must have hit her head on the dock and lost consciousness. By the time they’d found her, it was too late.

Orquídea liked to say that their family was cursed. But she wouldn’t say why. Marimar didn’t always believe her until that day. It had made her furious. What was the point of all of it? All of the candles, the salt in the grain, the roosters, the fucking laurel leaves meant for protection. Every reliquary her grandmother believed ordained their family with good luck was worthless because Pena Montoya, her beautiful, erratic, aloof mother, drowned anyway. If they were cursed, it was because of Orquídea. Marimar was only thirteen and certain of it. She became a wild thing. She shattered vases, jars full of roots and herbs, bottles of amber liquor. She took a kitchen knife and began cutting out Orquídea’s precious golden laurel leaves, their delicate petals etched so deep in the door and windows that she barely made a scratch.