The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina (18)

Dark green ivy and vines crept between the wood panels, through shattered windows, all-consuming, as if devouring the house back into the ground. Roots broke through the porch like tentacles, strangling the door handle to shut the way in.

And if Orquídea Divina was still inside, it shut her way out.

Rey marched up the front steps and stood beside her. His fingertips brushed against one of the windows, dragging a finger along a hairline fracture that led to the stamped gold laurel. A single leaf was peeling off the glass.

“Grandma?” Marimar beat her fist against the door. When she pulled her hand back, there was a thorn lodged into the tender side of her palm. It hadn’t even stung.

Rey blinked away his surprise. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it her. “Here.”

She dislodged the thorn, but only a single drop of blood fell.

Rey grabbed one of the roots that didn’t seem to have any thorns and yanked. It was like trying to pry open an iron fence.

“We’ve tried that,” came a voice behind them.

Tío Enrique, the second youngest of Orquídea’s sons, stuffed his hands into slim fit trouser pockets. “But please, tell us what you would do that we haven’t tried for hours.”

“Shut up, Enrique,” Rey snapped, trying to grab the root that kept the door from opening. He kicked at the vines. He picked up a large rock, but they just seemed to grow thicker, wilder.

Enrique chuckled, more amused than offended at having one of his nephews speak to him that way. Then something cruel gleamed across his features. “Praise the Saints, you finally have a backbone.”

“Ignore him,” Marimar muttered and cupped her hands against one of the least obstructed windowpanes. There was too much dust on the inside. She remembered Monday mornings when they poured Orquídea’s homemade cleaning liquid and scrubbed the whole house from ceiling to floor. The longer she tried to look, the more the vines shook, and the house let out a loud groan.

“What should we do?” Tatinelly asked, her voice like the susurration of leaves on the breeze. “This little one’s starting to get hungry.”

Reymundo did a double take. The last two years had been good to Cousin Tati. She placed her hands on her pregnant belly and sat on the bottom porch steps. Her husband—a thin man with sunburned patches all over his arms and nose—hurried close to her side. He looked like a rabbit caught in a snare. They should’ve all been afraid. They should’ve all been horrified at the state of the house. But there they were, getting angry and frustrated instead.

“Didn’t she hide keys inside the big apple tree when she was mad?” Rey asked. “Maybe—”

“The orchard is withered,” Enrique said dismissively, and stuck out his chest like Gabo, the rooster.

The family gathered closer, staggering along the creaky porch steps. Their bright colors made them look like wildflowers sprouting between overgrown yellow grass.

“What else have you tried?” Marimar demanded.

“Knocking,” Tía Florecida ticked off words on her slender fingertips. “Shouting. Breaking down the door. The house did not like that, but Ricky never listens. I used to sneak out through the back, but it’s all sealed.”

“She just needs time,” Tío Félix reassured them. He had a black mustache though his thick wavy hair had gone salt white.

“You’re right, Daddy,” Tatinelly said in that pretty, soft way of hers. Where Marimar felt like a blowhorn, Tatinelly was a windchime. Marimar had always wondered how her cousin was able to maintain such a calm disposition. Even in the face of the strangest circumstance their family had ever faced, Tatinelly giggled. “Isn’t it curious?”

Rey crossed his arms over his chest. “?‘Curious’ isn’t the word I’d use.”

“What would you use?” Juan Luis piped up from the crowd in his prepubescent squeak.

“I’d say this is fucked,” Rey said.

Marimar tried to bite down her laughter. The twins and Penelope were delighted at the swearing and repeated the words like cockatiels. The matrons not so much.

Tío Félix nodded, tugging at the tip of his chin. “I’m beginning to get worried.”

“B-beginning?” Mike Sullivan asked. He’d twisted the invitation into an unrecognizable scrap.

“What more did we expect?” Ernesta sighed. “I swore I’d never come back here.”

“Who invites people over and then keeps them waiting outside?” Reina, Félix’s wife asked. Her feathered lipstick kept spreading.

“You don’t have to be here,” Caleb Jr., the youngest of the Montoya progeny, reminded her. He had all the heat of a stove burner set to medium. Though he’d left Four Rivers to continue and expand his father’s perfume empire, he loved his mother and would not stand for a negative word about her.

“Ani?ado, momma’s boy,” Florecida muttered at her baby brother. “Why don’t we call Sheriff Palladino?”

“What’s he going to do? Tip his hat at the roots and tell the house to have a peachy day?” Enrique waved a dismissive hand.

“I don’t see you doing anything but trying not to get your bespoke shirt dirty,” Caleb Jr. said.

Ernesta shoved a finger against his heart. “Don’t start.”